In this Environmental Daily Advisor video, Advisor editor Kelly Lagana talks with Amanda Czepiel about Qualifying for Self-Certification under the SPCC Regulations. Amanda Czepiel is legal editor for BLR’s environmental compliance products.
KL: Hi everybody, I’m Kelly Lagana. I’m with BLR’s Environmental Daily Advisor. We’re talking to Amanda Czepiel; she is our SPCC legal expert in-house and she writes all of our SPCC topic content for all of our environmental products. Thanks for hanging out with us today! So today we want to talk about qualifying for self-certification under the SPCC regulations. Let’s start at the beginning. What are the certification requirements under SPCC reg’s?
AC: Sure. Every facility that’s covered under SPCC must be certified. But under that requirement there are two different paths to go. And one is being certified by a professional engineer. And obviously that’s going to cost a little bit more because you’re going to have a relationship with an outside professional. And that involves not just the first certification but amendments to your plan going forward. And then the second path is self-certification. And not everybody has this option, but certain facilities do, and obviously that, if you feel comfortable doing so, would be probably a good bet.
KL: That’s the way you want to go. All right. So for those facilities that do have that option and they want to make their lives easier, what are the criteria for that self-certification? What do they have to do?
AC: Sure. Well the threshold question is ‘what’s your capacity?’ Facilities that have over 10,000 gallons of aggregate capacity in above ground storage must be certified by a professional engineer. So if you’re above 10,000… sorry!
KL: You’re out of luck.
AC: But if you’re below 10,000, it may be an option if you meet a little bit more of these other criteria. So the next criteria after you’ve met that threshold requirement — and again that’s aggregate capacity: not how many gallons you have on site, but how many can you have on site. So if you have less than 10,000 gallons capacity then you have to question your spill history. So the spill history is if you’ve had one of two, or both events. If you’ve had both or one of these, you do not qualify either. So if you’ve had a spill of over 1,000 gallons or two spills of 42 gallons or more each. If you have one of those two scenarios, you’re not going to qualify. And that’s within a twelve month period, three years before you have to certify. So if you have one of those spills in the three years before you have to certify, you’re going to have to go to a professional engineer.
KL: Like we always say, leave it to SPCC to be very complicated in their language.
AC: Exactly. Exactly. Getting the wording out there sometimes is quite challenging.
KL: Right. So now, is self-certification, is it limited to just one option?
AC: There are actually two different kinds of certification. At the beginning of self-certification rules, there was just one kind of certification, and now there’s two. There’s Tier 1 and Tier 2. And again it goes back to the threshold of your capacity. So Tier 1 is an option for facilities that do not have an individual container that has the capacity of 5,000 gallons. So if you have a huge container on your site that’s over 5,000, you do not qualify for Tier 1. But you can qualify for Tier 2. The differences between the two tiers – again, both are self-certification—but Tier 1 allows you to use kind of a pre-printed template that’s in appendix G of the SPCC regulations. So obviously you would print out this tier potentially. I mean, it’s not the easiest thing to fill out but it is a pre-printed type of road map for your SPCC plan.
KL: It’s something you can do yourself.
AC: Yes, definitely. And Tier 2 is you cannot have that template in use. You have to create your own plan for your facility. So although you can self-certify you still need to create kind of a plan from scratch that meets your facility. So those are the two different tiers. Again, both are self-certification, but one’s a little bit more in depth.
KL: OK, great. So, are there any limits to self-certification for these facilities?
AC: Sure. You can pretty much self-certify your entire plan. However, under the SPCC regulations, alternative methods and measures are allowed. And that’s kind of using an equivalent thing to meet one of the regulatory requirements. Those alternative methods have to be certified by a professional engineer. They have to either be reviewed and certified or there has to be some kind of documentation that a professional engineer believes that those alternative methods are equivalent. And that documentation just needs to be kept with the plan.
KL: Oh, OK. Sounds good.
AC: But that would just be one part that needs to be certified; it doesn’t have to be an ongoing relationship.
KL: OK, great. Well, thank you very much for all this information. We have lots of certification information on the Environmental Daily Advisor for SPCC. We also have on our sister website Enviro.BLR.com, a whole topic area related to SPCC. You can find it in that navigation box on Enviro.BLR.com. We have a customizable plan that you can write for yourself and all the attachments. So check it out if you fall under SPCC requirements– there is just a ton of information there to help you stay compliant, no matter what certification you want to follow or what kind of facility you are. It’s all comprehensive there. So thank you very much! We’ll see you next time guys.