Do you have an oil spill prevention plan?
Farm and Ranch May 27, 2010 It’s never been widely publicized but any farmer or rancher with an oil or fuel tank larger than 13-hundred-20 gallons that could possibly leak into a river, lake or stream, is required to have an oil spill prevention plan. Here is American Farm Bureau Federation Regulatory Specialist Paul Schlegel.
Schlegel: “We want people to know there is 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 are going to have a containment in place. It does not necessarily mean that they are 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 is not going to be a danger of that on your operation and you have made a good faith effort to assure that, then you won‘t have to undertake anything on your farm.”
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. If you don’t have a spill plan Schlegel says do so by November 10th. Then if you should have a plan but don’t?
Schlegel: “If they don’t they will 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.”
I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.
