Farmers Undertake Environmental Land Stewardship Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the Farmers Undertake Environmental Land Stewardship Act--or the FUELS Act--is an important piece of legislation that brings much-needed relief to the Nation's agricultural community. H.R. 311 is a bipartisan bill that currently has 73 cosponsors from Members on both sides of the aisle.

It passed the House unanimously last Congress and again last year as an amendment to the farm bill. Additionally, this legislation has gained the support of more than 30 producer organizations, including every major farm group.

The EPA-mandated SPCC--or Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure--rules requires that oil storage facilities with a capacity of over 1,320 gallons make costly infrastructure modifications to reduce the possibility of oil spills.

These mandated infrastructure improvements, along with the necessary inspection and certification by a specially licensed professional engineer, would cost farmers tens of thousands of dollars.

The SPCC program dates back to 1973, shortly after the Clean Water Act was signed into law. In the last decade, it has come down harshly on agriculture, and the rules have been amended, delayed, and extended dozens of times, creating enormous confusion in the farming community.

On top of that, the EPA has failed to engage in effective outreach to producers and cooperatives on SPCC's compliance.

The FUELS Act is simple. It revises the SPCC regulations to be reflective of a producer's spill risk and their financial resources. The exemption level would be adjusted upward from an unworkable 1,320 gallons of oil storage to an amount that would protect small farms, 10,000 gallons.

The bill would also place a greater degree of responsibility on farmers and ranchers to self-certify compliance if their oil storage facilities exceed their exemption level. To add another layer of environmental production, the producer must be able to demonstrate that he or she has no history of oil spills.

The University of Arkansas conducted a study, concluding that this bill would exempt over 80 percent of producers from SPCC compliance, saving up to $240 million in costs in Arkansas alone. For the entire country, it could save small farmers up to $3.36 billion.

The last thing the government should be doing is imposing an expensive regulatory burden on farming families. There is no scientific justification for such action, bolstered by the fact that the EPA cannot provide data or even anecdotal evidence of agricultural spills.

A 2005 USDA report found that more than 99 percent of farms surveyed haven't experienced a single incident. In fact, one year after this report was published, EPA endorsed the 10,000-gallon exemption threshold I am proposing in this bill. Unfortunately, they moved the goalpost again a few years later.

By the nature of their occupation, family farmers are already very careful stewards of the land and water. No one has more at stake than those who work on the ground from which they derive their livelihood.

I urge support of the FUELS Act and our Nation's small farmers.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlelady for her comments. I would say that the 10,000-gallon threshold that we have described here is actually taken right from the EPA.

Up to 2005, they were perfectly comfortable with the 10,000-gallon threshold, so we are basically saying that we definitely want to work with the EPA and use the thresholds that they see as viable or that they did see up to that point.

The other thing is that, in agriculture, it is not a one-size-fits-all type of a scenario, where there are different scales of production and different levels of production.

Economies of scale are certainly better equipped and use lots more fuel on their farm, and so we are trying to implement some guidelines that do respect the financial resources as well as the size of the operation.

And, again, there is no empirical evidence that there have been any kind of spills that would warrant this level of regulation for farmers and certainly not to the degree that 1,320 gallons calls for, and that would catch up virtually every farmer in the United States.

What we are trying to do is to implement some common sense into this in a way that even the EPA has already agreed to in past rules; so I just would, again, urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation. This will be, I believe, in total, the sixth time that we will have passed this out of the House.

Again, I think this is good commonsense legislation. I urge my colleagues to join in supporting H.R. 311.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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