EPA: How to Regulate Waste Tires Burned as Fuel

Date: November 13, 2009

Source: News Room

The US EPA is facing a difficult political dilemma on how to regulate waste tires used as fuel in the wake of an appeals court ruling while satisfying the competing demands of facilities that burn tires, waste companies, state officials and environmentalists. At issue is EPA's pending proposed Clean Air Act rule to identify non-hazardous materials that are solid waste. EPA had sought to exempt tires and other waste material used as fuel from the incinerator rules' more stringent requirements, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected that approach, finding the agency lacked discretion to deviate from the statutory language requiring "any" waste to be regulated, whether it is burned as fuel or burned to be incinerated.

EPA has until April 15, 2010, to re-propose the maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standard for boilers under section 112 of the Clean Air Act and the related but significantly more stringent rule for commercial and industrial solid waste incinerators (CISWI) under section 129 of the air law.

The EPA, which has in recent years sought to see waste as a resource rather than an environmental liability, wants to promote the use of tires as fuel over landfilling. However, environmentalists worry about toxic contaminants that may be released when they are burned and consequently want them regulated under section 129 that applies to incinerators that burn solid waste rather than section 112 that applies to boilers that burn fuel. If that happens, industry worries that the high cost of compliance will discourage their conversion to energy.

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