Recently the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that four Spruce Head lobster facilities have agreed to pay $3,000 each for having inadequate oil spill prevention plans.

Under expedited settlements, Maine Coast Seafood, McLoon’s Wharf LLC, Spruce Head Fisherman’s Co-op and the William Atwood Lobster Company agreed to create approved Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure plans and pay for violating the Clean Water Act. By agreeing to settle, the facilities avoided the risk of more punitive measures.

David Deegan, spokesperson for the EPA’s New England regional office, said it’s easy to think of a spill prevention plan as a bureaucratic requirement, but it’s more like a fire drill. Having a plan in place can help prevent some oil spills and allow for quicker response and containment of others.

“It reflects a comprehensive analysis of [a] site and really thinking through the potential threats and concerns,” Deegan said.

Any facility near water with oil storage capacity equal or greater than 1,320 gallons above ground and/or 42,000 gallons below is required by law to have a spill prevention plan. Facilities that came on line after Aug. 18, 2006 legally couldn’t have opened without one.

Approved spill prevention plans must include proof of secondary containment ability around fuel tanks or the infeasibility of such containment, a list of procedures to follow in case of a spill, control measures to prevent spills from reaching navigable waters, and phone numbers of necessary state and federal agencies to contact if a spill occurs. A business must pledge employees and equipment to help in oil spill cleanup efforts and to train employees to be able to follow the plan’s actions.

Spill prevention plans were first mandated in the 1970s after several disastrous oil spills in U.S. waterways, but Deegan said the EPA has stepped up enforcement of this rule in the last two years. Calamitous events like the 9/11 terrorist attacks and oil spills in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have made accident prevention an important task for the EPA, he said.

“The whole issue of preparedness has become more and more of a concern for us,” Deegan said.

A Surprise Regulation?

Deegan said facilities fined for not having spill prevention plans often didn’t know they needed them.

“My best guess is they aren’t aware of the requirements,” he said.

David Sleeper, general manager of the Spruce Head Fisherman’s Co-op agreed. He claimed the co-op received little notice of the spill prevention plan requirement other than a mention of it in state oil paperwork.

“Stuck away in some of the paperwork…there was a paragraph,” Sleeper said.

The co-op keeps an above-ground two-chamber fuel tank that can hold 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 2,000 gallons of regular gasoline. Though Sleeper contended that co-op members regularly checked for leaks and had a common-sense spill plan already in place, the co-op had no written plans available when an EPA inspector came last year.

Sleeper hoped from what he was told by the inspector that the co-op could have avoided a fine if an approved plan was put into place in a timely fashion. In the course of a year, the co-op made several safety improvements as a result of its plan, including chain-link fencing around the fuel tank, barriers in front of fueling stations, no-smoking signs around the tank and stations, and the addition of an oil-absorbing boom to the co-op’s oil spill preparedness kit. As required by law, the plan was approved by a certified marine engineer.

But Sleeper said he was surprised when he received notice from the EPA that the co-op must either agree to an expedited settlement payment of $3,000 or risk further legal action. The co-op chose to pay the fine.

“I don’t like the way it was done, none of us do,” Sleeper said. [But] the board decided the expedited settlement was the lesser of two evils.”

An Ounce of Prevention

EPA spokesman Deegan said payments in such expedited settlement cases are determined on a case-by-case basis. The settlements are usually offered in place of traditional fines if a business stores a relatively small amount of oil, already has good oil storage, and shows a willingness to fix any problems. Deegan said settlement amounts are partly based on a business’s ability to absorb the blow.

“We’re not looking to put small businesspeople out of business,” Deegan said.

While he understood that infrastructure improvement and settlement costs can be costly, it would be nothing in comparison to what a company might have to pay in the event of an oil spill — or the effects an oil spill might have on the local waterfront economy as a whole.

“An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure,” Deegan said.

To learn more about the oil-spill prevention criteria for waterfront businesses, visit www.epa.gov/oilspill.spcc.