Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment in defense of
agricultural producers across our Nation who are facing the heavy hand
of EPA regulations.

The EPA's Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure rule for on-
farm fuel storage requires farmers and ranchers to make costly
infrastructure improvements to their oil storage facilities to reduce
the possibility of an oil spill.

These regulations fail to take into account the relative risk of oil
spills on farms, and they do not factor in the simple fact that family
farmers are already careful stewards of our land and water. No one has
more at stake in the health of their land than those who work on the
ground from which they derive their livelihoods.

The USDA itself discovered little evidence of oil spills on farms and
determined in a recent study that more than 99 percent of farmers have
never experienced a spill.

To require that all of our producers make a significant investment to
prevent such an unlikely event seems out of touch with reality and
disregards the already overwhelming number of safeguards our farmers
already employ.

My amendment would restrict the EPA's ability to enforce SPCC
regulations on farms so that farmers and ranchers can go about their
business of producing food and fiber without having to worry about
unnecessary compliance costs and red tape.

On three separate occasions, the House unanimously passed my
bipartisan legislation, the FUELS Act, which rolled back these same
SPCC regulations on farms. I urge my colleagues to again support our
farmers and ranchers by supporting this amendment.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source