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Sep 15, 2016
In a late addition to the Senate year Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) consideration, provisions have been included to limit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on aboveground fuel storage on farms.
The provision would exempt certain containers from EPA's Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) rules. The provisions were tacked onto a substitute manager’s amendment on the Senate floor. The exemption would enable farmers to store up to 2,000 gallons of fuel on separate land parcels, as long as each tank is 1,000 gallons or less.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), a member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, had proposed legislation (S. 2993) earlier this year calling for an exemption on farms with less than 10,000 gallons of storage capacity.
As previously noted, there are still several steps remaining on the road to enactment of the overall WRDA legislation. The House must still pass its WRDA bill and a Conference Committee must resolve differences in the two versions to be passed and signed into law by the President.
