 Coalition for
Responsible Waste Incineration
CRWI Update
January 31, 2010
Boiler/CISWI Rulemaking
EPA released the boiler data base on January 4, 2010. In response to
questions, EPA made some adjustments to the data included and
re-released the data base on January 19, 2010. EPA also released the
CISWI (commercial and industrial solid waste incinerator) data base on
January 19. There are still some errors in the boiler total hydrocarbon
data but EPA has not yet decided how to post those fixes. The data can
be found at www2.ergweb.com/projects/combustion/combustiontesting.html.
EPA will sign three proposed rules on April 15, 2010: the CISWI rule;
the industrial boiler rule; and the definition of non-hazardous solid
waste rule. The definition of non-hazardous solid waste rule is
important because it defines which units are regulated under CISWI and
which are under the boiler rule. EPA has stated that they will not ask
for additional time to propose these three rules. All indications are
that the comment period for all three will be short (30 days).
In discussions with industry, EPA said that they planned to follow the
same process to set the boiler and CISWI standards as they did to set
the hospital/medical/infectious waste incinerator standards. This
process takes the average for each facility, rank them from the lowest
to highest, and pick the lowest 12% (or 5 if less than 30 sources) as
the top performers. EPA indicated that they will not use less than 5
sources for each category. EPA indicated that they will use all data
from a source as long as the configuration for that source has not
changed. EPA will use the upper 99% confidence limit as the floor for
each HAP. They will use a HAP by HAP approach. EPA has indicated that
they will develop subcategories based the type and design of the
systems (e.g., boiler type, fuel type – coal, bagasse, wood, etc.). EPA
has also indicated that they may develop additional subcategories based
on different types of HAPs. For example, EPA may subcategorize for
different fuel types for total hydrocarbon. EPA will treat boilers and
process heaters the same. EPA plans on using only the filterable PM
data (Method 5) to set the PM standard.
EPA’s first choice is to use total hydrocarbon as a surrogate for
non-dioxin organic HAPs. If this is not successful, they plan to use
carbon monoxide. There does not appear to be any plans to use the
methane, formaldehyde, or the other organic compound data as surrogates
for non-dioxin organic HAPs. EPA indicated they planned to use the test
data to set the initial floor standards but may use the CEMs data to
incorporate additional variability. EPA also indicated that they may
incorporate variability based on fuel analysis. EPA does not plan to
allow for malfunctions, opting instead for a 30 day averaging period.
To meet the April 15, 2010, schedule for signing these rules, EPA plans
to have all three at the Office of Management and Budget by March 15,
2010. They will accept suggestions up to March 1, 2010. After that, any
suggestions will be in response to the proposed rule.
Dioxin
On January 7, 2010, EPA published a notice of data availability and
request for comments on draft recommended interim preliminary
remediation goals for clean up of dioxin in soils. The draft document
suggests a clean up level of 72 ppt (TEQ) for residential soils and 950
ppt (TEQ) for commercial/industrial soils. Current clean up levels are
1000 ppt for residential soils and 5,000 to 20,000 ppt for
commercial/industrial soils. EPA will accept comments on this draft
until February 26, 2010.
EPA is expected to release their final assessment of risks posed by
dioxin in the near future. The new assessment is expected to state that
current body burdens are “probably” higher than the reference dose
(safe exposure standard) and that the life stage of greatest concern is
breast feeding infants whose mothers are exposed by food consumption.
In addition, the report is expected to identify dioxin as highly toxic
and bioaccumulative with almost all exposure occurring through food
consumption (over 95% from intake of animal fats). Early indications of
such a ruling led the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and
Drug Administration to test for dioxin contents in food. The newest
data (2008) shows that the dioxin content of pork, chicken, and turkey
declined 20-80% from 2003 levels while the levels in beef remained
about the same as they were in 2003. USDA is now expanding the study to
include farm raised catfish. Industry points out that dioxin are mostly
a legacy problem and that body burdens have been declining for the past
several years. Environmental groups respond that the body burdens are
still too high and the margin of error is too small. The real problem
may come when EPA effectively announces that the food supply is not
safe and people start switching to less nutritious diets. This could
put EPA at odds with USDA and FDA over whether the food supply is safe.
SLAB Final Rule
On January 8, 2010, EPA published amendments implementing recent
changes in the agreements on trans-boundary movement of hazardous waste
among countries that belong to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development. The amendments also establish notice and
comment requirements for movement of spent lead-acid batteries (SLAB)
intended for reclamation and changes the location where exception
reports should be sent. Additional information can be found in the Federal Register notice.
Electric Utility MACT ICR
EPA is under a court order to propose MACT standards for the coal and
oil fired electric power plants by March 2011. To gather the data
necessary to develop these proposed standards, EPA obtained approval
from the Office of Management and Budget (January 15, 2010, Federal
Register notice) for an Information Collection Request (ICR). The data
to be collected during the tests include particulate matter (PM),
particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen
chloride, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide, metal HAP (including
compounds of antimony, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt,
lead, manganese, and selenium), mercury, total organic hydrocarbons,
volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide. EPA has divided these
into four groups: acid gas HAP (hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride,
hydrogen cyanide, and sulfur dioxide), dioxin/furan organic HAP,
non-dioxin/furan organic HAP (total organic carbon, volatile organic
compounds, and carbon monoxide) and mercury and other non-mercury
metallic HAP (metals mentioned above plus both PM categories). Instead
of randomly selection a certain percentage of the facilities to conduct
a test measuring all parameters listed above, EPA has decided (for the
coal-fired electric generation units) to used a number of factors to
determine which units they believe are the best performing units for
each of the HAP categories listed above. For the metal group, the
non-dioxin organic group, and the acid gas group, EPA will ask the top
15% to perform the appropriate emissions tests for each HAP group. An
individual facility could be a top performer for any or all of the
three categories. For the dioxin/furan group, fifty coal-fired units
will be selected at random from the entire population of coal-fired
electric generation units. An additional 50 coal-fired units will be
selected at random from among those units not selected as being “top
performing” units to represent those coal-fired units not comprising
the top-performing units. These 50 randomly selected units will be
required to test for all HAP except dioxin/furan organic HAP. Data from
this last grouping will be used to assess the impact of the standards.
For the oil-fired electric generation units, EPA will select 100 units
to test for the same four sets of categories.
What is the interesting about this selection method is that EPA has
decided before getting the data which facilities are the best
performing units. Thus, they have used some method (other than the
lowest emitters) to determine who is the best performers for metals and
PM, the best performers for acid gases, and the best performers for
non-dioxin organic HAPs. Once the top performers are selected (with the
exception of the dioxin/furan group), EPA will then ask these top
performers to develop test data on which the Agency will develop
emission standards for each of these HAPs or their groupings. What will
really be interesting is how much of this data will be used to develop
the standard. Since EPA has already decided who the best performers
are, one could argue that they should use all the data collected to
develop the standards. On the other hand, the statute tells EPA to take
the top 12% of the facilities from which the Agency has data. This may
force EPA to use 12% of the top performers, appearing to have selected
the best of the best.
Coal Ash Regulations
In December 2008, a holding pond dam near Kingston, TN failed,
releasing approximately 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash sludge. The
local public raised concerns about the levels of metals (arsenic, lead,
chromium, manganese, and barium) in the resulting spill. Environmental
groups immediately called for regulation of coal ash as a hazardous
waste. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson promised to propose regulations
governing the management of coal ash before the end of 2009. The
proposed rule was sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on
October 16, 2009. This set off an intensive lobbying effort by both
industry and the environmental groups. Part of the problem is that some
of the fly ash from coal plants is used by the cement industry in their
production of Portland cement. In addition, some of the gypsum produced
by flue gas desulfurization is used to manufacture wall board. These
industries were concerned that having coal ash regulated as a hazardous
waste would eliminate these beneficial uses. In response, EPA came up
with a hybrid approach where the materials that were reused would not
be regulated as waste but the ash that was discarded would be regulated
as hazardous waste. Industry did not like that idea and proposed
instead to have EPA use its enforcement authority under RCRA to
regulate coal ash waste ponds and landfills on a site-specific basis.
Environmental groups countered that a site-specific determination is a
resource intensive process that is not needed and that test results
show that coal ash is a hazardous waste and should be regulated as
such. As of the end of January, the proposed rule was still at OMB.
IRIS
EPA announced an external peer review draft of a toxicological review
of methanol in support of revising the data on methanol in the
Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). A listening session for this
document will be held on February 23, 2010, in Arlington, VA. The
comment period for the review draft will be open until March 15, 2010.
Additional details can be found in the January 13, 2010, Federal Register notice.
Toxicogenomics
Toxicogenomics is a field of science that deals with the collection,
interpretation, and storage of information about gene and protein
activity within a particular cell or tissue of an organism in response
to toxic substances. Toxicogenomics combines toxicology with genomics
or other high throughput molecular profiling technologies.
Toxicogenomics tries to determine the molecular mechanisms evolved in
the expression of toxicity, and to derive molecular expression patterns
(i.e., molecular biomarkers) that predict toxicity or the genetic
susceptibility to it. EPA believes that genomics methodologies will
provide valuable insights for evaluating how environmental stressors
affect cellular/tissue function and how changes in gene expression may
relate to adverse effects. However, the concept is still new and the
relationships between changes in gene expression and adverse effects
are unclear and may likely be difficult to decipher. To this end, EPA
announced the availability of a final report on how toxicogenomic data
can be used in human health risk assessments, using dibutyl phthalate
as a case study (January 13, 2010, Federal
Register). A copy of the document can be found at www.epa.gov/ncea.
EPA Enforcement Priorities
EPA resets its enforcement priorities every three years based on three
criteria: whether significant environmental or health benefits will be
gained from focused enforcement; whether there is a pattern of
non-compliance in the sector; and whether non-compliance is
sufficiently widespread to justify it as a national priority. EPA’s
proposed enforcement priorities for FY 2010 – 2013 retained a number of
priorities from the past three years and added some additional areas.
The areas retained were concentrated animal feeding operations, wet
weather municipal water infrastructure, NSR permit violations and air
toxics, RCRA financial assurance, and mineral processing. The areas
added included environmental justice, surface impoundments, RCRA
corrective action enforcement, resource extraction (natural gas and
mountain top mining), wetlands, marine debris, pesticides at day care
centers, and worker protection standards for pesticides. There also
seems to be an environmental justice component for each of these areas.
2010 EPA Regulatory Themes
On January 12, 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson sent a memo to all
Agency employees outlining the seven themes she would like to focus on
in 2010. They are climate change, air quality, chemical safety,
cleaning up communities, clean water, environmental justice and
expanding environmentalism, and strong state and tribal partnerships.
During her first year, EPA worked on greenhouse gas regulations for
mobile and stationary sources, reviewing each of the six air quality
standards, ramping up its oversight of chemicals, and doubling the
number of enforcement categories. Work on some of the 2009 priorities
continues, adding to the work load for 2010. Some observers have
expressed concern about the pace of activity, suggesting that the
Agency may not be able to properly follow through with the all of the
agenda items.
Two More RAs Named
On January 13, 2010, President Obama named Dr. Karl Brooks to be
Regional Administrator (RA) for Region 7 and Dennis McLerran to be the
Regional Administrator for Region 10. Dr. Brooks was an Associate
Professor at the University of Kansas, teaching history and
environmental studies. Prior to that position, he was the executive
director of the Idaho Conservation League and served for six years in
the Idaho state Senate. Mr. McLerran was the executive director of the
Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, a local organization that adopts and
enforces air quality standards in the Seattle area. Regions 4, 5, and 8
are still waiting for permanent heads.
Climate Change – Regulations
On January 29, 2010, President Obama signed an executive order that
requires government agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
by 28% by 2020. To meet this goal, the Office of Management and Budget
will score each agencies annual performance and release that
information to the public. This order does not include activities of
federal suppliers nor does it include commutes by federal employees. It
also does not include combat operations by the Department of Defense.
It appears that EPA’s prevention of significant deterioration tailoring
rule will be headed toward a legal challenge if it gets finalized as
proposed. In their comments on the proposed rule, at least some of the
environmental groups and most of the industry groups filing comments
questioned whether EPA has the authority to raise these thresholds. All
point out that raising the permitting threshold from 100 and 250 tons
per year to 25,000 tons per year is not allowed by the Clean Air Act
and is likely to be overturned if challenged.
The Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned EPA to develop a
national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for carbon dioxide. In a
recent paper, Resources for the Future supported this petition, arguing
that the endangerment finding would force EPA to regulate greenhouse
gases under the NAAQS framework. The paper acknowledges that this
section of the Clean Air Act is poorly suited for regulating greenhouse
gas emissions, but that the common language of the different sections
of the Act makes it difficult to choose not to create the standards.
Others have pointed out that if EPA develops NAAQS for carbon dioxide,
it would place the entire country into non-attainment and would require
states to develop plans to drastically reduce emissions. This would
force local governments to implement local solutions to combat a global
problem.
In December 2009, an industry group filed a petition for review of
EPA’s endangerment finding in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit. On January 22, 2010, a coalition of 16
states and the city of New York filed a petition to intervene on the
behalf of EPA. This is the same group that won the Supreme Court ruling
that EPA was required to make an endangerment finding. The interveners
state that upholding the rule is key to protecting the states from
adverse climate effects.
Climate Change – Legislation
On January 21, 2010, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) introduced Senate
Joint Resolution 26 which, if passed, would disapprove EPA’s
endangerment finding. She currently has 40 co-sponsors on the
resolution including three Democrats (Ben Nelson, D-NE, Mary Landrieu,
D-LA, and Blanche Lincoln D-AR). The majority of the co-sponsors are
Republicans. Two Republicans (Olympia Snowe, R-ME and Susan Collins,
R-ME) are not cosponsors. Congressman Jerry Moran (R-KS) introduced a
companion resolution in the House (House Joint Resolution 66) with
three co-sponsors. Since the Democratic leadership opposes this
resolution, it is unlikely that it will be passed. It is even more
unlikely that the President would sign it. So, the likelihood of
Congress overturning the endangerment finding is small. However, the
Republicans have done a good job of lining up most of their party to
support this idea and enticed a few Democrats to join them.
Climate Change – IPCC
One of the predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) was that the glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains would
melt by 2035. In mid-January, a Canadian professor of geography and
glaciers pointed out that there is no scientific data to back up that
prediction. It was also pointed out that not all of the glaciers in the
region were melting but in fact, some were advancing. The chairman of
the IPCC panel agreed that a mistake had been made by including this
prediction and suggested that the rigorous procedures for scientific
review were not properly followed in this case. However, he assured the
public that this error should not detract from the overall sense of
urgency on the need to act promptly to avert this crisis. This coupled
with the recent release of e-mails may have damaged the cause. It
remains to be seen whether these mistakes will lead the public to
question the credibility of all the climate change science.
Biomass Gasifers
The U.S. Department of Energy announced a $22.6 million grant to
Rentech Inc. and ClearFuels Technology to build a 20 ton per day
biomass gasifer to produce syngas from wood waste and other organic
feedstocks. The award is conditional on final approval of the
applications. Meanwhile, Alter NRG Corporation announced that their
Madison, PA plasma gasification facility has started delivering clean
syngas to Coskata’s cellulosic ethanol conversion facility. Coskata
uses a proprietary process to convert syngas to ethanol. The press
release did not mention the volumes of syngas being delivered.
CRWI Meeting
The next CRWI meeting will be held on March 2-3, 2010, in Victoria, TX.
The meetings will include a tour of INVISTA’s combustions operations.
For more information,
contact CRWI.
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