The Clean Water Act

Our oil rig spill lawyers are investigating the Deepwater Horizon disaster to determine if either BP PLC or Transocean LTD violated the federal Clean Water Act. In 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established regulations to address the oil spill prevention provisions contained in the Clean Water Act. The regulation forms the basis of EPA’s oil spill prevention, control, and countermeasures, or SPCC, program, which seeks to prevent oil spills from certain aboveground and underground storage tanks.

The regulation requires each owner or operator of a regulated facility to prepare an SPCC Plan. The Plan is required to address the facility’s design, operation, and maintenance procedures established to prevent spills from occurring, as well as countermeasures to control, contain, clean up, and mitigate the effects of an oil spill that could affect navigable waters.

The regulations were revised on two occasions, in 1991 and 1994. The revisions incorporated new requirements added by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that direct facility owners or operators to prepare, and in some cases submit to the federal government, plans for responding to a worst-case discharge of oil.