“By acting today and extending the compliance deadline for farms by one year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will help to ensure that America’s farms and ranches have additional time to comply with Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) regulations dealing with on-farm oil storage. The announcement also delays the compliance date for on-farm milk storage until one year after EPA finalizes a rule for these facilities. NCFC has been supportive of both of the compliance extension and special rules recognizing the unique situation with on-farm milk storage, and we commend EPA for finally acting on these requests.

“At the same time, we remain concerned that even the extended compliance deadline will be difficult for many agricultural producers to meet. NCFC has been actively engaged on the SPCC issue for a number of years. While EPA has listened to the concerns of the ag community and recognized the unique circumstances of on-farm oil use and storage, they still have more work to do in their outreach to individual farmers and ranchers. EPA can not expect that the agency can simply set a compliance deadline and have producers, who are busy running businesses and providing for their families, understand and implement these changes.

“It is NCFC’s hope that we can continue to work with EPA to ensure that farming operations are able to meet new SPCC requirements in a timely and cost effective manner.”

National Council of Farmer Cooperatives

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