Oil spills endanger public health, impact drinking water, devastate natural resources, and disrupt the economy. The goal of EPA’s Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasures (SPCC) plan is to prevent oil spills into the waters of the United States and adjoining shorelines. A key element of the SPCC rule requires farms and other facilities to develop, maintain and implement an oil spill prevention plan, called an SPCC Plan. These plans help farms prevent oil spills, which can damage water resources needed for farming operations, as well as control a spill should one occur.

For farms that began operations after August 16, 2002, you must prepare and implement an SPCC plan which meets all of the SPCC requirements no later than May 10, 2013. If your farm was in operation before August 16, 2002, and you do not already have a plan, you need to prepare a plan that meets all of the SPCC requirements and implement the plan as soon as possible.

You may be asking, “Does this SPCC Rule impact my farm?” If you do not store more than 1,320 gallons of oil or oil products on your farm in aboveground containers, or 42,000 gallons of oil or oil products in completely buried containers, you are not subject to the SPCC rules.

The rule considers the storage at a facility on a tract of land. For larger farms, there are multiple tracts of land. Facilities (“farms”) which potentially are subject to SPCC requirements can be subdivided by property, parcel, and lease. If the individual areas (property, parcel, lease) don’t exceed the threshold requirements, the individual areas are not subject to SPCC regulation.