Mark Pryor: “I thank my colleague and friend from Oklahoma. He was doing such a good job of explaining the amendment, I didn't want…”

“I thank my colleague and friend from Oklahoma. He was doing such a good job of explaining the amendment, I didn't want to interrupt him. But I thank him so much for yielding. Later this week, all farms in the United States will have to comply with the EPA's spill prevention, control and countermeasures rule known as SPCC. That takes effect on May 10. But farms are not like other regulated entities in the SPCC realm. Farms are unlike other SPCC entities the agency has dealt with since 1973. They do not have, by and large, environmental manager personnel ready to follow through on these regs and to make sure they are in compliance with all the EPA stuff; whereas, other businesses with larger financial resources tend to have more resources and more people devoted to making sure they comply with all the EPA regulations. Agriculture actually has a very good track record on fuel spills. Row crop farms, ranches, livestock operations, farmer cooperatives and other agribusinesses pose a very low risk for spills when we look at the statistics. Many of these tanks are seasonal, and they stay empty for large parts of the year. But they allow farmers to manage the high fuel costs they have to endure. In my State, it is mostly diesel--and probably mostly diesel in most parts of the country. In fact, when we look at the data, spills on farms are almost nonexistent.…”