An environmental law firm says Hawaii’s Agriculture Department should lose its enforcement authority over federal pesticide violations for failing to do the job, but the state’s agriculture chief said it has made big strides and is on top of the situation.

Nonprofit organization Earthjustice filed a formal complaint Thursday with the Environmental Protection Agency as a first step toward possibly getting the Agriculture Department’s authority to investigate and enforce against violations of federal pesticide law in Hawaii revoked.

It said the EPA had found in 2015 that the Agriculture Department had a backlog of 700 inspection files needing review, some dating back to 2008.

Paul Achitoff, managing attorney for Earthjustice in Hawaii, faulted the department for ignoring repeated EPA warnings that it wasn’t keeping up with its responsibilities, and for cutting staff in recent years despite a growing number of complaints of possible violations.

“Hawaii Department of Agriculture’s lackadaisical approach to enforcement allows pesticide users to imagine that careless practices, or even knowing violations, have no consequences,” Achitoff wrote in the complaint.

But Scott Enright, chairman of the Board of Agriculture, said Thursday that his department works closely with the EPA and has already slashed that backlog by two-thirds. He said the Agriculture Department submitted an action plan to the EPA during its last performance review in May that addresses the issues Earthjustice is raising.

“We have done the work that we promised the community we would be doing in the Ige administration,” Enright said in a telephone interview from Maui. “We are taking our pesticide enforcement agents from five up to 11. We have reduced the backlog that they speak of in the complaint by 66 percent, and we are continuing to work on it.

“We brought on a deputy attorney general who works exclusively on pesticide issues with us,” he said. “And so we are moving forward. We take seriously the work that we are given to do by the EPA in regulating pesticides, and we will continue to do that statewide.”

The Agriculture Department has a cooperative agreement with EPA that gives the state primary enforcement authority for pesticide use violations.

Achitoff cited EPA reviews since 2013 documenting the growing backlog, a declining number of inspections and a lack of enforcement actions.

“EPA action in this matter is essential to protect agricultural workers and communities in Hawaii from suffering health and safety harms caused by pesticide use violations,” the complaint said.

“Some cases eventually referred to EPA that would have qualified for enforcement action were closed because the statute of limitations had expired,” he wrote.

He pointed to a significant increase in the number of pesticide-related complaints received by the Agriculture Department. They focused mainly on pesticide use by large agrochemical companies as well as herbicide use by departments of transportation.

Enright said the Agriculture Department’s backlog is below 250 and that new positions should be filled close to the end of this calendar year.

“People have concerns, and we are going to do the work that we need to show the citizens of this state that pesticides are being used responsibly and according to the label that the EPA has issued.”

Enright said that during the last economic downturn, the Department of Agriculture lost 40 percent of its workforce.

“It lost more people in the reduction in force in state government than any other department,” he said. “All our positions are specialty positions. … Putting back those positions has been exceedingly difficult, but we are doing that work.”