Montana State University Extension has been fielding numerous questions about confusion over deadlines required by the Environmental Protection Agency’s program for Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC).
Seeking to prevent oil spills in the waters of the United States and adjoining shorelines, the program calls for farms and other facilities to have an oil-spill prevention plan, or SPCC plan, with a deadline for filing that plan set to expire next year.
The EPA definition of a farm is “a facility on a tract of land devoted to the production of crops or raising of animals, including fish, which produced and sold, or normally would have produced and sold, $1,000 or more of agricultural products during a year.”
Many questions concerning SPCC regulations regarding farms has been related to public notices about a compliance deadline extension for farmers.
Farms that started operations after August 16, 2002 are entitled to an extended deadline of May 10, 2013, for filing their SPCC plan. Farms in operation before August 16, 2002, should maintain or amend their existing plan by May 10, 2013. Farms in operation before August 16, 2002, that do not already have a plan should not wait until May 10, 2013, but should prepare and implement one as soon as possible.
The SPCC regulations under the EPA have been on the Federal Register since 1972.
“There is widespread misunderstanding that these are new regulations; when in fact, SPCC rules were authorized under the Clean Water Act of 1972 and made effective in 1974,” said Adam Sigler, Water Quality Associate Specialist in the MSU Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences.
Under the regulations, a farm falls under SPCC only if it meets certain criteria. Those covered by SPCC are farms that store, transfer, use or consume oil or oil products — diesel fuel, gasoline, lube oil, hydraulic oil, adjuvant oil, crop oil, vegetable oil or animal fat — and store more than 1,320 U.S. gallons of those products in above-ground containers or more than 42,000 U.S. gallons in completely buried containers, with a reasonable risk that they might spill into waterways of the U.S. or adjoining shorelines of interstate waters, intrastate lakes, rivers and streams.
The law specifically applies to “navigable waters,” which has been and continues to be a matter of legal dispute.
Although there has been anticipation about possible changes to the SPCC legislation, MSU Extension cautions farmers that they are responsible for determining if their farm falls under the criteria in the SPCC rules.
Guidance for inventorying and documenting oil storage capacity and determining reasonable risks for spills into applicable waters are available on webpages maintained by MSU and North Dakota State University —http://waterquality.montana.edu/docs/SPCC.shtml and http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/waterquality/spcc-1, respectively.
MSU Extension recommends that farmers keep a record of their findings, although it is not necessary to file findings with the EPA. While the EPA does not actively seek violators, it does have the authority to inspect farms, and failure to comply with SPCC may result in a fine. Both university websites provide links to templates and EPA websites to help insure an inspection will meet EPA requirements.
Those without Internet access, or with further questions, can contact county Extension agents for assistance, or call MSU Extension Agent Mark Rude in Sheridan County, at (406) 765-3406.
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