Regulations Trends
Three Important Issues
With a reliable and custom summary of environmental regulations that addresses only those regulations that have the potential to impact you and your business, you can address issues upfront and aggressively, resulting in more time available to run your business effectively and without environmental compliance issues.
Dan Holland
Tracking environmental regulations can often be a backburner chore for environmental managers, especially environmental mangers in the waste industry where daily environmental compliance can be more than an 8 to 5 job. Picture this, it’s 5:01 pm and you made it through the day meeting all of your environmental compliance obligations, but you still need to check the Federal Register and your State Web site for environmental notices that could be applicable to you. You look at the Federal Register notices, see that it includes a page and a half of notices, and decide that you will follow up with it tomorrow. Except that the next day brings chaos and before you know it you have multiple days of notices to review. If this scenario mirrors any of your recent weeks, you may have missed these three important air issues.
Air Regulations for RICE Units
How many of you have reciprocating internal combustion engines, or RICE units at your facility? These RICE units serve a variety of roles, including emergency and limited-use purposes. Are you aware that these RICE units are subject to federal New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) and Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards under the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) regulations? If you are under the impression that your facility is too small, your operations are too minor or your RICE unit must be too old to fall under these two regulatory programs, you could be seriously mistaken. A summary of some key RICE unit NSPS and MACT applicability criteria are presented below.
The NSPS requirements apply to compression ignition (CI) and spark ignition (SI) RICE units, 40 CFR Part 60 Subpart IIII and JJJJ, respectively. The CI NSPS apply to owners and operators of RICE units as follows:
CI RICE units ordered after July 11, 2005 and manufactured after April 1, 2006 (except that fire pump engines have a manufacture date of July 1, 2006).
CI RICE units modified/reconstructed after July 11, 2005.
The SI NSPS apply to owners and operators of RICE units as follows:
Greater than or equal to 500 hp SI RICE units ordered after June 12, 2006 and manufactured on/after July 1, 2007, except for lean burn SI RICE units greater than or equal to 500 and less than 1,350 hp which have on/after January 1, 2008 manufacture dates.
Less than 500 hp SI RICE units ordered after June 12, 2006 and which have on/after July 1, 2008 manufacture dates.
Emergency use RICE units equal to or greater than 130 hp ordered after June 12, 2006 and manufactured prior to January 1, 2009.
Emergency use RICE units greater than 25 and less than 130 hp ordered after June 12, 2006 and manufactured on/after January 1, 2009.
SI RICE units modified/reconstructed after June 12, 2006.
MACT standards apply to facilities that are “major” sources (i.e., if your facility emits more than 25 tons per year of hazardous air pollutants [HAPs] or 10 tons per year of any single HAP) as well as sources that are classified as “area sources” (sources that emit at levels less than the major source HAP level). The RICE MACT at 40 CFR 63 Subpart ZZZZ will apply to existing, new and reconstructed units (both SI and CI) as follows:
At major sources, RICE units greater than 500 hp qualify as existing if constructed before December 19, 2002, qualify as new if construction occurred on/after December 19, 2002 and qualify as reconstructed if reconstruction occurred after December 19, 2002.
At major sources, RICE units less than or equal to 500 hp qualify as existing if constructed before June 12, 2006, qualify as new if construction occurred on/after June 12, 2006 and qualify as reconstructed if reconstruction occurred after June 12, 2006.
At area sources all RICE units qualify as existing if constructed before June 12, 2006, qualify as new if construction occurred on/after June 12, 2006 and qualify as reconstructed if reconstruction occurred after June 12, 2006.
Existing emergency engines meeting certain criteria and located at residential, institutional or commercial area sources are exempt from the RICE MACT. Additionally, at major HAP sources, certain types of lean burn SI RICE units, limited use RICE units and landfill gas/digester gas RICE units are exempt from the RICE MACT.
If you find your RICE unit subject to either the NSPS and/or the MACT, be aware that there are monitoring, recordkeeping, notification and various compliance requirements such as
Emission testing,
Fuel requirements,
Engine use recordkeeping
Retrofit/engine rebuilding
that apply to you beginning as soon as May 3, 2013 for CI RICE units and October 19, 2013 for SI RICE units. The RICE NSPS and MACT are certainly regulations that potentially warrant your attention over the next several months.
NHSM Definition and Waste Recycling
We can agree that the RICE MACT and NSPS are examples of regulations that you need to stay informed about. What about the pending regulatory definition of “non-hazardous secondary material” (NHSM)? The existing definition as well as a pending revision to the definition, which are contained in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulations at 40 CFR 241.3, are especially important to those in the waste recycling business that provide materials for generating alternate fuels used by combustion units or that supply ingredients that are used in a combustion unit (e.g., in the cement making process alternate sources of raw materials may be processed in a kiln where combustion takes place).
Although the pending NHSM definitions will not affect facilities until September 2013 at the earliest, the ramifications of not qualifying an alternate fuel as a NSHM are significant. If an alternate fuel does not qualify as a NHSM, the combustion unit using the fuel will be regulated under a set of restrictive regulations for Commercial and Industrial Solid Waste Incinerator (CISWI) units as opposed to less restrictive regulations for commercial boilers (i.e., Boiler MACT emission units). Many industrial combustion units will not be able to meet the CISWI emission limits and would likely eliminate the use of alternate fuels that did not qualify as a NHSM. So what is involved in ensuring that a NHSM determination can be provided?
First it is important to note that the end user ultimately holds the responsibility for ensuring that an alternate fuel fired or an alternate raw material used as an ingredient in a combustion unit meets the definition of a NHSM. Under the current and proposed NHSM definitions, a facility that uses an alternate fuel that contains a material that has been discarded, must ensure that the material has been “processed,” has meaningful heat content, has been managed properly and has contaminant levels that are less than those in traditional fuels. In order to ensure that these regulatory requirements are met, a legitimacy criteria demonstration must be prepared.
So what could the waste industry’s obligations be for supporting a NHSM legitimacy criteria demonstration? As a supplier of materials used for alternate fuels or as a direct supplier of an alternate fuel, you minimally could be asked to provide information about how a discarded material is processed. For example, is the material shredded and sized to design specifications? Is the source of the material consistent? It may also be necessary for you to provide analytical data concerning the contaminant levels and heat content levels of your material. It may be necessary to perform multiple analyses in order to demonstrate that you have consistent data (and for budgetary purposes, count on spending about $500 per analysis to obtain contaminant and heating value information). At the end of the day, you could be expected to provide a complete legitimacy criteria demonstration for a specific end user. A legitimacy criteria demonstration could easily cost between $10,000 and $12,500, plus analytical costs. Consequently, it will be very important to track the regulatory progress of the NHSM and to determine just what your obligations could ultimately be to the end user.
When is a Gas a Solid Waste?
Finally, there is a possible regulatory action that could have a significant impact on landfills providing landfill gas for combustion purposes. This possible regulatory action links back to the Boiler MACT and CISWI rules proposed in December 2011. Specifically, the action involves how U.S. EPA would treat byproduct gases that are not “contained” and that are combusted. In a seemingly illogical twist, uncontained gases could be regulated as a solid waste. Examples of these uncontained gases include landfill gases that are flared or landfill gases that are sent to a third party for generating heat or power.
Based on recent discussions between EPA and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the DENR has not received assurance from EPA that combustion of landfill gases is exempt from the restrictive regulations under the CISWI rules. Although EPA has assured various industrial stakeholder groups that it has every intention of exempting uncontained gases from being classified as “solid wastes,” the proof will be certain when the proposed NHSM rule is published (the Boiler MACT, CISWI rule and NHSM definition have been at the Office of Management and Budget for more than six weeks now so it is likely that there are still discussions being held about the scope of these rules).
It is important to note that the scope of the three regulations covered in this article is representative of early July 2012. Promulgation of pending rules, EPA guidance and even stakeholder litigation could result in a different interpretation of the information presented.
The waste and recycling industries have always presented opportunities for the innovative reuse of materials that benefit the generator, the end user, entrepreneurs and arguably the environment. However, the opportunities that are present can be significantly diminished by being caught unprepared for these three regulations and possibly others. Fortunately there are tools that can provide customized and succinct monthly summaries about changes in environmental regulations across all media and at all levels: federal, state, and local. With a reliable and custom summary of environmental regulations that addresses only those regulations that have the potential to impact you and your business, you can address issues upfront and aggressively, resulting in more time available to run your business effectively and without environmental compliance issues.
Dan Holland is a founding partner and principal air quality consultant with ALL4 (Kimberton, PA) and an EnviroReviewTM consultant. His career spans almost 30 years during which time he has provided air permitting and air dispersion services to a variety of industrial clients throughout the U.S. Most recently, he has focused on NHSM determinations and other beneficial reuse projects. Dan can be reached at (610) 933-5246, ext. 15, via e-mail at [email protected] or visit www.all4inc.com.