EPA's Final Boiler Rules Draw Criticism from Activists and Industry

Date: March 3, 2011

Source: News Room

EPA's recently released final rules regulating air toxics from combustion is drawing criticism from environmentalists and industry alike. Environmentalists argue that the definition of solid waste rule is so narrow as to leave the vast majority of small units with no emission controls at all. Industry argues that the legitimacy criteria, used to determine whether a material constitutes a waste that is subject to more stringent incinerator regulation, or a fuel that is subject to less stringent boiler regulation, is too vague to encourage conversion to energy of materials otherwise destined for the landfill.

EPA's rule defining non-hazardous solid waste is one part of a suite of air and waste rules EPA released Feb. 23. The package included air toxics rules for sewage sludge incinerators, large and small boilers and waste incinerators. The waste rule, which defines non-hazardous solid waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), is significant because it determines whether industrial power units must meet air toxics rules for boilers or the more-stringent air toxics rules for incinerators.

Under the waste rule, EPA says that traditional fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, and 'alternative' traditional fuels like clean cellulosic biomass are not waste and can be burned in units following the less-stringent boiler rules. Units burning other materials can be exempt from strict incinerator requirements if they meet certain "legitimacy" criteria and remain under the control of the generator, or have been processed to produce a fuel, the rule says. Scrap tires and resinated wood residuals are also exempt -- even if they are no longer under the control of the generator -- as long as they meet the legitimacy criteria, the rule says.

The final rule includes more exemptions than the proposed rule. For example, the exemptions for unprocessed scrap tires and resinated wood were included for the first time in the final rule. According to a Feb. 23 EPA statement, the agency found that just 88 of about 200,000 boilers qualify for strict air toxics controls under the agency's incinerator rules. However, Bob Cleaves, president of the Biomass Power Association, worries that waste rule requirements as defined in the legitimacy criteria are unclear and raise more questions about which materials are exempt from waste and incinerator regulations. "There is a question as to whether they went far enough to help our industry grow," he said on a Feb. 24 conference call.

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