Burdensome EPA Regulations

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAWFORD. I thank the gentlelady and her staff for arranging this Special Order to discuss this issue that we have been talking about--the egregious overreach of the Environmental Protection Agency.

I want to talk about an issue that is very close to you and near and dear to you and that you have helped me on, and that is the spill prevention and containment countermeasures issue, which is facing farmers across the country.

Mr. Speaker, we have taken action on this. If you are like me and if your staff is like my staff, we have fielded countless phone calls from farmers who are concerned about these new rules that the EPA was attempting to roll out with respect to on-farm fuel storage at, really, an unmanageable level. 1,320 gallons was the threshold that would require that the farmers construct these spill prevention and containment countermeasures. For those who don't know what those are, those are berms, or protective dikes, around a storage facility that can cost tens of thousands of dollars to ag producers. Farmers may be land rich--capital rich--but they are not cash rich by any stretch of the imagination, so this adds cost to their operations.

Really, who pays for that?

We have talked about it with our power plants. The ratepayers pay. The American people pay for that because prices go up. Generally, while the farmer bears the burden initially, ultimately, those costs are passed on to the consumer, which is the case in nearly every one of these issues where we see the EPA engaging in overreach.

So we took to the floor to try to change this, and we were successful, not once but twice, in passing by voice vote the FUELS Act. That would have changed the threshold from 1,320 gallons to 10,000 gallons. Between 10,000 and 42,000, you would be required to build the structure, but above 42,000, you would then be required to engage the services of a professional engineer for certification in order to meet that standard for EPA's compliance.

Now, the University of Arkansas did a study on the FUELS Act which addressed the spill prevention and containment countermeasures, and they estimated nationwide that this bill, which was passed successfully on the House floor, would save American farmers $3.3 billion. I don't know about you, but I think this $3.3 billion could do our economy a heck of a lot better service than chasing this problem that really doesn't exist.

Why do I say this problem doesn't exist?

A decade ago, the USDA did an analysis of the spill prevention and containment countermeasures, and they discovered there was little, if any, evidence of farms having any oil spills. In fact, 99 percent of farmers had never experienced an oil spill, and that means that the compliance cost of $3.3 billion is essentially a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't exist.

What we did was we took that 10,000-gallon threshold directly from the underlying law--the Clean Water Act--that regulates on-farm fuel storage, and they defined, in their own words, 10,000 gallons as being a proper definition of a family farm, of small farm fuel storage. The commodities at this scale are certainly storing more than 10,000 gallons on their farms. Being a farmer yourself, you know that you store in greater quantity than 10,000 gallons, particularly if you are engaged in a larger scale operation. So, number one, the evidence just isn't there to support the 1,320-gallon threshold.

Number two, we had over 30 commodity organizations and agricultural organizations that were in support of the bill. We passed it twice on the floor. The Senate will not move. The EPA continues to move forward, and we continue to be concerned about the EPA's drive to overregulate on-farm fuel storage.

Again, I want to thank the gentlelady for her leadership on this and for bringing this to the attention of the American people, because everything that we have heard tonight and everything that has been talked about has a direct impact on their bottom lines and on the quality of life for their farmers.

I would also like to echo what my colleagues have said. We certainly don't want to see poor air quality or poor water quality. I have kids at home. I love my kids. You love your kids. I know you have small ones at home, too. We are just as committed to a clean environment as anybody is, but we are also committed to the quality of life, to the costs incurred in that quality of life and to a more responsible approach.

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