From the EPA’s National Agriculture Compliance Assistance Center

EPA is proposing two amendments to the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) Rule. The first streamlines the regulatory requirements for qualified facilities and equipment regulated under 40 CFR part 112. The second extends the SPCC compliance dates for all facilities. EPA proposes to extend the compliance dates for the owner or operator of a farm, as defined in proposed §112.2, that has a total storage capacity of 10,000 gallons or less, to prepare or amend and implement the farm’s SPCC Plan. The Agency proposes to extend the farm compliance dates until EPA completes information collection and analysis to determine if differentiated SPCC requirements may be appropriate for farms. The agricultural community has provided EPA with additional information and data which suggests that the universe of farms subject to the SPCC rule may be much larger than EPA estimated in the preparation of the 2002 SPCC rule revisions. EPA believes that the unique characteristics of farms pose particular challenges to SPCC compliance and that further consideration of the requirements as they relate to farms is warranted. Therefore, EPA intends to review the impact of the SPCC requirements on farms and will take action in a future rulemaking.