Regulatory Relief

Regulatory Relief

Ag groups around the country have been working for years to get the Environmental Protection Agency’s Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure rule changed. Now a provision in the recently passed Water Resources Reform and Development Act has done just that. Prior to this containers as small as 50 gallons were required to be counted towards a farmer’s or ranchers aggregate fuel or oil storage and a capacity of 1,320 gallons of aggregate above ground fuel storage triggered SPCC requirements. The SPCC rule was originally designed for large fuel storage facilities, but the EPA applied it to family farms in 2009, which resulted in farmers and ranchers being affected by an imposing, expensive, and for modern agriculture, a completely unrealistic regulation. Through the provision only containers of more than 1,000 gallons will be counted toward aggregate storage and the aggregate above ground fuel exemption level has been raised to more than 6,000 gallons for an interim period, until the USDA and the EPA can complete a study identifying where the aggregate threshold level should be permanently.






 
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