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December EQB Agenda Includes Storage Tank, New Source Review Regs

The December 20 Environmental Quality Board meeting includes a comprehensive set of changes to Storage Tank regulations and revisions to New Source Review that will affect 700 sources of air emissions. Quick summaries follow—

Proposed Regulation - Storage Tank Program Amendment– This package includes comprehensive as well as and minor editorial changes to Chapter 245 that affects approximately 7,900 tank owners or operators of over 43,000 currently regulated storage tanks.

The Storage Tank Advisory Committee (STAC) was involved in the development and review of the proposed rulemaking and voted to support all administrative and technical provisions of the proposal, except for tank registration fee increases, which they opposed.

As a result of recent amendments to the Storage Tank Act prohibiting the department from adjusting registration fees until January 1, 2010, the fee increases were removed from the draft proposed rulemaking.

DEP recommends a 60-day comment period.

Proposed Regulation – New Source Review - The proposed rule amends 25 Pa. Code Chapter 121 (relating to general provisions), and Chapter 127 (relating to construction, modification, reactivation and operation of sources) to revise the existing NSR regulation to incorporate certain changes required by the U.S. EPA and to revise the State Implementation Plan.

DEP said the amendments are “reasonably necessary” to achieve and maintain the national ambient air quality standards including the 8-hour ozone and fine particulate standards and to avoid the imposition of discretionary and mandatory sanctions under the federal Clean Air Act.

The proposed amendments will affect approximately 700 major facility operator/owners of major air contamination sources affected by the special permitting requirements of 25 Pa. Code Chapter 127.

The Citizen Advisory Counsel Air Committee and the Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee discussed the draft and voted to advance the proposed rulemaking to EQB.

As noted in the Preamble and in their review letters, CAC and AQTAC would like to see public comment taken on several issues including: a 5-year or 10-year look-back; plant wide applicability limits (PAL), whether the severe ozone nonattainment area provisions should be included for the 5-county Philadelphia area; demand growth exclusion; differences from the federal requirements; de minimus aggregation and the advanced clean coal technology provision.

DEP recommends a 60-day comment period with three public hearings.

For more information about the agenda, contact DEP Regulatory Coordinator Marge Hughes at 717-783-6395.


12/9/2005

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