Current federal spill prevention, control, and countermeasure (SPCC) rules are intended to be performance-based. In other words, specific levels of protection against oil spills as well as response to spills must be met, but regulated facilities are given considerable latitude in how those levels are achieved. One reason for this approach is to allow industry the flexibility to quickly adopt new technologies and practices as they become available.

SPCC requirements affecting this approach are spelled out in the environmental equivalence provision at 40 CFR 112.7(a)(2). In the SPCC context, "equivalent environmental protection" means a level of protection of navigable waters and adjoining shorelines from oil pollution, which deviates from specific requirements of the SPCC rule but which provides equal protection. This can be achieved in various ways, but a facility may not rely solely on measures that are required by other sections of the rule (e.g., implementing secondary containment) to provide environmentally equivalent protections. While environmental equivalence need not be a mathematical equivalence, it must achieve the same desired outcome.

The selection and implementation of environmentally equivalent measures must be reviewed and certified by a professional engineer as being consistent with good engineering practice. Also, deviations are not allowed for certain requirements, primarily secondary containment, general recordkeeping, and training.

In SPCC Guidance for Regional Inspectors, EPA lists SPCC requirements that are eligible for environmental equivalence by facility type:

• All regulated facilities-security, loading and unloading racks, brittle fracture evaluation
• Onshore facilities-facility drainage/ undiked areas, type of bulk storage container, drainage of diked areas, corrosion protection of buried storage tanks, integrity testing and/or container inspection, monitoring internal heating coils, engineering of bulk container installation (overfill prevention), monitoring treatment/disposal facilities, removal of oil in diked areas and production facility drainage, piping
• Oil drilling and workover facilities -facility drainage/undiked areas (rig position), blowout prevention and well control system
• Offshore facilities-offshore oil drilling and workover facilities

EPA's SPCC guidance for regional inspectors is available at http://www.epa.gov/emergencies/content/spcc/spcc_guidance.htm#Content.

[Source: Environmental Manager's Compliance Advisor. Subscribe today!]