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(1) Onshore facilities: (I) Dikes, berms or retaining walls sufficiently impervious to contain spilled oil; (ii) Curbing; (iii) Culverting, gutters or other drainage systems; (iv) Weirs, booms or other barriers; (v) Spill diversion ponds; (vi) Retention ponds; (vii) Sorbent materials. The SPCC regulation implements Section 311 0) (1) (C) of the Clean Water Act (CWA) for non-transportation-related facilities. In 1988, the Agency published regulations at 40 CFR Part 280 for underground storage tanks(USTs) implementing the requirements of Subtitle I of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. An apparent result of the implementation of the UST regulation is a trend of facilities replacing USTs with ASTs. In response to this trend, tank manufacturers have developed various new designs for shop-fabricated AST systems. Alternative AST systems for which we have information generally do not exceed 12,000 gallons capacity. Some of these new designs include a steel or reinforced concrete secondary shell fully encasing a storage tank; others include an attached; shop-fabricated containment dike. Many other system designs may also be available. Typically, these alternative AST system designs provide containment for the entire capacity of the inner tank for spills resulting from leaks or ruptures of the inner tank. In 1988, EPA noted in its Oil SPCC Program Task Force Report that the Agency has limited inspection resources to implement the SPCC program. Less than 1,000 of the estimated half million SPCC-regulated facilities are inspected by EPA annually. Moreover, section 311 of the CWA does not permit EPA to delegate this program to the States. The Task Force, therefore, recommended that EPA attempt to target these very limited resources to inspecting the highest-risk facilities. In general, we believe that facilities using smaller-volume AST systems generally pose less risk than larger field- erected tanks and tank farms of large uncontrolled spills reaching navigable waters, especially if these facilities are not located near sensitive ecosystems or water supply intakes. The traditional method of providing secondary containment for ASTs has been to construct dikes, berms, retaining walls and/or diversion ponds to collect oil once it spills. Based on the experience of EPA Regional personnel implementing the SPCC regulation since 1973, those traditional means of secondary containment are very effective and reliable methods of protecting the surface waters from oil spills from ASTs. However, the SPCC regulation is a performance-based regulation that permits facility owners or operators to substitute alternative forms of spill containment if they provide protection against discharges to navigable waters substantially equivalent to that provided by the systems listed in section 112.7(c). Consistent with section 112.1(e) of the SPCC regulation, this memorandum does not supersede the authority of "existing laws, regulations, rules, standards, policies and procedures pertaining to safety standards, fire prevention and pollution rules," including