Old Law Could Apply to Farmers

Old Law Could Apply to Farmers. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It's never been widely publicized, but any farmer or rancher with oil or fuel tanks larger than 1,320 gallons that could possibly leak into a river, lake or stream is required to have an oil spill prevention plan. SCHLEGEL: We want people to know there's an obligation. They need to look at it. This is new for lots of farmers who were never made aware that this regulation applied to them. And they may well have to undertake certain things on their farm to assure that they're going to have a containment plan in place. It does not necessarily mean that they're going to have to erect concrete bunkers or berms or what have you. They could do it with an earthenware surrounding of the tanks, but they still need to make an effort to find out if there were a spill from his tank would it reach navigable waters and that is the key question. If there's not going to be a danger of that on your operation and you've made a good faith effort to assure that, then you won't have to undertake anything on your farm. American Farm Bureau Regulatory Specialist Paul Schlegel says the law has been around for 30 years, but about eight years ago the Environmental Protection Agency decided to clarify the spill program rules for farm operations. SCHLEGEL: If you were in operation before the year 2002 you already should have a plan in place. Now I think everyone acknowledges there has been little education in the community about this. So there are people that probably should have a plan that don't. They need to get going and make sure they make a good faith effort to find out what their obligations are, look at the requirements of the regulation and get something in place certainly as soon as possible, but in any event before November 10th. And if they don't? SCHLEGEL: If they don't they'll be talking to the enforcement folks at EPA who have the right to come and look at your operations to say, "Let me see the plan you have in place to prevent a spill from reaching navigable waters." And if they don't they can be fined. Schlegel describes the oil spill prevention, control and countermeasure program. SCHLEGEL: The spill prevention, control and countermeasures rule has been in effect for well over 30 years. It was first enacted in the early 1970s to deal with oil spill. It was an effort to get in place protections for oil that is spilled to what's called navigable waters under the clean water act. So it's been in effect for quite a long time, for decades. Some farmers can self-certify their operations under the program. SCHLEGEL: For farms you can essentially self-certify under certain circumstances. The only conditions under which you actually have to have a professional engineer come in and approve your plan is when you have more than 10,000 gallons of capacity on your operation. So they were accommodating to us. They also told us that they recognize that some farming operations have different parcels of land. It could be down the road. It could be in the next county, what have you. Originally they were going to take the tanks on all of those plots of land and aggregate them. We pointed out that that was not a good idea and they accommodated us on that. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.