EPA streamlines plant review process

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched a program to streamline and simplify the process of determining which new and modified industrial facilities must be reviewed for significant environmental effect.

EPA said the proposal will halve the paperwork process of issuing air emission permits under the New Source Review (NSR) program, saving industry and states more than $13 million/year in administrative costs while still ensuring environmental protection.

Administrator Carol M. Browner said, "The proposal will protect public health while providing state governments and industry with greater flexibility, speedier air emissions permits, and increased incentives for use of improved air pollution control technology."

Congress included the NSR program in the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments in a move designed to ensure that industrial expansion occurred in harmony with environmental protection.

NSR requires large industrial facilities and power plants to obtain permits before they build new facilities or significantly increase emissions at existing ones.

The new program has two parts:

Nonattainment NSR applies to facilities in areas of the U.S. that have atmospheric (ambient) air pollution levels violating federal standards.
The Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) part affects plants in parts of the U.S. that have clean air.

EPA said requirements and procedures that evolved under the NSR program were complex and prescriptive. They often limited a plant's production flexibility or inadvertently impeded conversion of older, higher polluting processes to more efficient and environmentally beneficial new ones.

The agency has been working with industry, environmental groups, and states to reform NSR and has made several changes such as exempting special projects case by case to improve pollution control.

The latest proposal goes further, significantly simplifying and clarifying NSR applicability procedures and permitting requirements.

Exemptions

Under the new program, plants installing effective pollution prevention measures or innovative pollution control technology would be exempt from NSR.

A facility would have the flexibility to set one plant-wide emissions "cap." Any changes in operations would be exempt from NSR if the overall cap were not exceeded.

Pollution control projects substituting environmentally safe substitutes for stratospheric ozone depleting substances would be exempt.

In the past, a facility's "potential" emissions (the maximum a plant is theoretically capable of putting out) determined if NSR requirements were applicable. EPA now would exempt a source if its changes do not increase its emissions.

Facilities doing a good job of controlling air pollution are granted more flexibility than those doing a poor job.

States would be given much greater flexibility in determining the kind of effective pollution control technology their industries must use.

The proposal would improve the process of protecting areas such as national parks and certain wilderness regions by providing earlier involvement during the permit application process.

EPA proposes to ease restrictions on the use of emission reductions from plant shutdowns to offset emissions from new sources in nonattainment areas.