Farmers Undertake Environmental Land Stewardship Act

Floor Speech

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my concern on consideration of H.R. 311. This legislation would inexplicably weaken environmental safeguards against oil spills for one specific sector of our economy, American farms.

Under current law, any facility that stores certain quantities of oil is required to take precautionary steps to prevent the discharge of oil into U.S. waters. These requirements apply across the board based on the quantity of oil stored in the facility, which can range from an industrial facility to a service station to, of course, a farm.

These steps, outlined in the EPA's implementation regulations, known as the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure--or SPCC--rule, require facilities put in place appropriate measures to prevent any spilled oil from entering the water, which can include both the construction of containment systems or more simplistic measures to capture small leaks.

The SPCC rule also requires such facilities to have a plan in place in advance that identifies additional measures to clean up any oil that might otherwise escape

such containment. These provisions generally have been in place since 1974 and have been in force for farmers since May 2013.

Since that time, all farmers who fall within the guidelines of the SPCC rule should now have put in place appropriately scaled countermeasures based on the size of their facility and the likelihood of an oil spill reaching U.S. waters; yet H.R. 311 would modify the existing obligations for farmers to comply with the SPCC rule.

In many instances, H.R. 311 would alleviate existing SPCC obligations for farmers to develop oil spill contingency plans, especially for those farmers that store less than 10,000 gallons of oil in above-ground containers.

In summary, this bill would tell farmers that currently have these measures in place to stop taking precautionary efforts to prevent spills.

Why does this legislation make this change? Is it because the oil stored on farms is less likely to spill or to pollute U.S. waters than other facilities that store oil? There is no empirical evidence in the committee record that this is the case.

Is it because the oil stored on farms is any different from oil stored at other facilities? Again, the answer is likely no.

The stated reason for this legislation is that these safeguards simply cost too much for American farmers, but the reality is, for many farmers, many of these costs have already taken place, especially any capital costs that might have been required for containment structures.

So, in reality, many of the compliance cost concerns expressed in this bill may well be overstated, as annual compliance costs may now be reduced simply to cover periodic maintenance.

Mr. Speaker, again, I have concerns with this legislation, and I hope that, as we continue to work through this issue, we will come up with a more sensible way of addressing the protection of our American farms, as well as the protection of our U.S. waters.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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