BLUE RIDGE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE LEAGUE
www.BREDL.org ~ PO Box 88 Glendale Springs, North Carolina 28629 ~ Phone (336) 982-2691 ~ Fax (336) 982-2954 ~ Email: BREDL@skybest.com

January 22, 2002

Fred Starr, Public Hearing Officer Environmental Management Commission
1617 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1617

Re: Proposed DAQ Rule Changes under 15 A NCAC 2D .1200 and 2Q .0700

Dear Mr. Starr:

On behalf of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, I write to provide additional comments to my oral remarks given at the first public hearing on January 7^th. We have four recommendations for the Environmental Management Commission:

General Comments

For fourteen years BREDL has opposed the incineration of all types of waste: solid, hazardous, medical, and radioactive. We have assisted many communities in successful campaigns to shut down existing incinerators to prevent new ones.

All waste combustor regulations share a fundamental assumption which is incorrect and deceptive: that toxic substances are destroyed by burning. Incineration reduces waste volume and changes its character by burning, turning it into ash and invisible particles. But burning, or chemical oxidation, cannot destroy elemental material such as mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. Also, no incinerator achieves 100% efficiency; therefore, even a 99.99% rate of destruction allows one ton of unburned waste to be emitted into the air annually from a 27 ton per day incinerator. Moreover, new, even more toxic compounds are created by incineration. Dioxins and furans are created where none existed before by the burning of plastic with paper. These extraordinarily toxic compounds are formed in the smokestack when emissions gases cool and where pollution control devices are ineffective. Combustion disperses toxic substances into the atmosphere in a way which makes them able to bypass the body’s defense mechanisms. For these reasons and more we oppose incineration. With these caveats, I submit the following comments.

Specific Comments

2D .1205 Municipal Waste Combustors

Generally, this rule change is an improvement over existing emissions control requirements for municipal waste incinerators. Improvements include reducing allowable emissions of particulate matter (PM) from 70 to 27 mg/dscm and requiring better sulfur dioxide (SO2) reductions— from 50 to 75%, and hydrogen chloride reductions— from 50 to 95%. The new rule effectively eliminates small municipal solid waste incinerator emissions limits, requiring all combustors to conform with better controlled large units, reducing allowable levels of cadmium, lead, and dioxin.

The new rule does create a loophole in emission standards in paragraph (c)(15) which states: “The emission standards…[apply] at all times except during periods of municipal waste combustion unit startup, shutdown, or malfunction that last no more than three hours.” Without a way to reliably record malfunctions and bypass, pollution control devices may be circumvented an unknown amount allowing huge, illegal increases in emissions. The Environmental Management Commission should not approve rule 2D.1205(c)(15) without requiring continuous emission monitoring of all bypass stacks on all waste combustors.

2D .1210 Commercial and Industrial Solid Waste Incineration Units

The rule changes create a new class of incinerator for commercial and industrial solid waste (CISWI). Whiles some of the emissions limits are lower than the new limits for municipal solid waste incinerators (MSWI), some are higher. Why would the Environmental Management Commission approve rules which simultaneously raise and lower emission standards for solid waste combustion?

The new rule would permit CISWI to emit nearly triple the particulate matter of MSWI (70 mg/dscm versus 27mg/dscm), double the hydrochloric acid (62 ppm versus 31 ppm ), and six times the mercury ( .47 mg/dscm versus .08 mg/dscm). The dioxin limits for CISWI fall between the limits for MSWI with electrostatic precipitators and without.

The EMC should reject these higher pollution levels for CISWI and require all solid waste combustors to meet the new standards for MSWI. Since no CISWI have been permitted or built, this requirement would create no hardship to existing incinerator operators. CISWI should be required to comply with the strictest standards in all cases in order to avoid a waste shell game where solid waste streams may shuttle between incinerators based on lesser regulation and lower cost.

Section .1210 (k), the Waste Management Plan, requires nothing but the filing of a report which merely gives “consideration” to reduction or elimination of items that should not be burned at all. The EMC should change this section to require, for example, that non-combustibles such as aluminum cans be removed from the waste stream.

2Q .0702 Exemptions

With all due respect to the members of the Environmental Management Commission, the combustion source exemption is a giant loophole which the EMC approved without a full understanding of the extent of the change. The change now under consideration would expand that ill-conceived exemption.

Scores of boilers for major pollution sources such as furniture plants, paper mills, and fourteen coal-fired power plant boilers operated Duke Power and Progress Energy are exempted from the toxic air pollutant program under this rule. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League requests that the EMC not broaden this loophole; instead, we recommend that the Commission take steps to eliminate the TAP exemption for all fossil-fueled combustion sources.

The relevant change in 2Q .0702 would be the addition of the second sentence in paragraph (b) reproduced below underlined.

The alteration under consideration changes the manner in which many combustion sources will be treated during permitting and what will be included in computer modeling estimates of ambient pollution impacts. Silence in the existing rule is replaced with the certainty of exclusion and exemption. Adoption of this rule means that an exemption from toxic air pollutants (TAPs) would be made ironclad for all industrial boilers including electric generating coal-fired power plants and combustion turbines, internal combustion engines, and industrial process heaters.

For example, the new rule would broaden an existing asphalt plant pollution exemption by adding language which specifically prevents including asphalt cement heaters emissions in plant totals. The asphalt cement heater is exempted from the NC Toxic Air Pollution program under present rules. The asphalt cement heater exemption is included under the list in 15A NCAC 2Q .0702, where paragraph (a)(18) states:

The combustion source definition under 2Q .0703 (4) states:

Asphalt cement heaters are considered to be “process heaters” and are exempted as such, but the new language adds “shall not be included” for this source and 22 others.

Rather than broaden the exemption, the EMC should require all sources conform to the same standard now required for all 27 source categories under 2Q.0702(a). We propose that the EMC change 2Q .0702 (b) to read: “Emissions from the activities identified in Subparagraphs (a)(1) through (a)(27) of this Rule shall be included in determining compliance with the toxic air pollutant requirements in this Section and shall be included in the permit if necessary to assure compliance.”

Thank you for your consideration of these comments.

Respectfully submitted,

Louis Zeller

Clean Air Campaign Coordinator