EPA considers air emissions status reductions for coating application

The Environmental Protection Agency is debating whether to allow major sources of air emissions of hazardous air pollutants to reclassify as area sources, which are less regulated. Getty Images

Many metalworking sectors are watching with interest as the Environmental Protection Agency decides whether to allow major sources of air emissions of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) to reclassify as area sources, which are less regulated.

Major sources are facilities that emit 10 tons/year of any single HAP or 25 tons/year of any combination of HAP. Once classified as major sources, those facilities have to implement maximum achievable control technology (MACT), which the EPA specifies. Those emission control limits can be costly. It is then difficult under current regulations for major sources to reclassify as less regulated area sources, which are subject to a generally achievable control technology (GACT) standard, which are less onerous and, in many instances, prescribed by the state in which the facility is located, not the EPA. The EPA wants to allow a major source to become an area source at any time by limiting its HAP “potential to emit” (PTE)—a term of EPA regulatory art—to below the major source thresholds.

Part of the issue is whether reclassifying as an area source, and thereby shucking the MACTs associated with their specific National Emission Standard for Hazardous Air Pollutants, would result in greater emissions of HAPs if the facility qualified for the less stringent GACT. The EPA has hypothesized that wouldn’t happen because many facilities under NESHAPS also have non-HAP emission controls, which would also limit HAP emissions if they became area sources.

One of the metal sectors the EPA looked at in making the above guess was “miscellaneous metal parts and products, whose NESHAP is referred to as “subpart MMMM.” In this segment, the EPA identifies 371 major sources. (This segment includes a variety of products, such as automobile parts, heavy equipment, and metal buildings.) Other NESHAPs that will come into play, for example, are those for surface coating of metal coils and surface coating of metal furniture.

One issue that has arisen is that some NESHAPs do include deadlines for companies covered to apply to become area sources. In some cases, those are very specific deadlines established when the NESHAP first went into effect. Many of those deadlines have passed.

Wayne D’Angelo, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing the Steel Manufacturers Association and the Specialty Steel Industry of North America, said the EPA should extend those deadlines for facilities doing surface coating of metal coil and those doing surface coating of miscellaneous metal parts and products. D’Angelo did not respond to a request for further comment.

“The ability of a firm to reclassify from a major source to an area source, and therefore be subject to less expensive and time-consuming area source requirements, is an important economic incentive to firms to reduce their PTE to below major source thresholds,” said Christopher Shanks, president, Non-Ferrous Founders' Society, which represents manufacturers of metal castings used in many manufactured products.

The PTE definition, which is used to establish both MACT and GACT standards, is based on various emissions tests a company must perform. The EPA would make some changes to that definition as part of any final rule, a decision welcomed by, among others, the Aluminum Association, which has members complying with the surface coating of metal coil NESHAP.

“The association supports EPA’s proposal to revise the definition … by removing the requirement for federally enforceable PTE limits and requiring instead that PTE limits meet the effectiveness criteria of being both legally enforceable and practically enforceable, and providing relevant definitions for those new terms,” said Curt Wells, senior director of regulatory affairs, The Aluminum Association. “The association does not support that public notice and comment procedures should be part of the new required effectiveness criteria.”

Environmental groups oppose making reclassification easier. These groups argue the rule, if finalized, would vastly increase emissions of air pollutants, whose danger to public health Congress firmly instructed EPA to minimize, and unwind decades of progress toward that statutory goal.