The New England Fuel Institute (NEFI) is applauding the recent decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that removes parked cargo tank trucks containing product from SPCC-sized secondary containment requirements, according to information in NEFI's weekly e-newsletter, NEON.
The newsletter noted that a heating oil distributor last year reported it had been fined under the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasures (SPCC) rule for not providing a sized secondary containment for cargo tank vehicles containing product that were parked overnight at the fuel oil dealer's facility.
As a result, the NEFI Government Affairs Committee (GAC), led first by Chris Keyser (Owner Services, Rutland VT) and later by Tom Devine (Devine BioHeat, Norwalk CT), developed a strategy to change the SPCC requirement without risking enhanced enforcement against all dealers. Later, NEFI's counsel meet with EPA and made the case that sized secondary containment was unnecessary for parked trucks and asked that a rule change be made. NEFI argued that parked trucks should only be required to comply with general secondary containment requirements rather than the sized secondary containment. As a result, dealers would only be required to plan for the most likely release, in most cases a leaky valve requiring nothing more than absorbent material or a drip pan. The EPA agreed with NEFI and made the necessary changes in the final rule.