After a ten year consultative process involving public comment, pilot studies and pressure from both political parties for improvements in the New Source Review programme, the US EPA has announced steps to reform its NSR rules. EPA's own review process found that the NSR programme had impeded improvement projects or caused their cancellation. It has submitted recommendations to president Bush designed to reverse the process and encourage pollution prevention projects, energy efficiency improvements, and investments in new technologies.
Last summer, the USA's state governors and the state environmental commissioners called, on a cross-party basis, for reform of the NSR programme. EPA administrator Christie Whitman has been quoted as saying "... our review clearly established that some aspects of the NSR program have deterred companies from implementing projects that would increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution." The reforms that EPA is now finalising have, say the agency, been in preparation for six years. They are: l To encourage pollution prevention, EPA will create a simplified process for companies that undertake environmentally beneficial projects. NSR currently tends to discourage investment in pollution control and prevention projects, even if they reduce overall emissions.
• To provide facilities with greater flexibility to modernise their operations without increasing air pollution, a facility would agree to operate within strict site-wide emissions caps called Plantwide Applicability Limits. PALs provide 'clarity, certainty and superior environmental protection'.
• To encourage the installation of state-of-the-art air pollution controls, EPA will give plants that install 'clean units' operational flexibility if they continue to operate within permitted limits.
• Currently, the NSR program estimates emissions increases based upon what a plant would emit if operated 24 hours a day, year-round. This makes it impossible to make certain modest changes in a facility without triggering NSR, even if those changes will not actually increase emissions. This reform will require EPA to evaluate how much a facility will actually emit after the proposed change.
The EPA is also proposing three reforms that will go through new rulemaking and public comment processes before they are finalised. These include: l Routine maintenance, repair and replacement - to increase environmental protection and promote the implementation of necessary repair and replacement projects, EPA will clarify the definition of "routine" repairs. NSR excludes repairs and maintenance activities that are "routine," but a complex analysis must currently be used to determine what repairs meet that standard. This has deterred companies from conducting needed repairs.
• Debottlenecking. EPA is proposing a rule to clarify how NSR applies when a company modifies one part of a facility in such a way that throughput in other parts of the facility increases .
• Aggregation. Currently, when multiple projects are implemented in a short period of time, a difficult and complex analysis must be performed to determine if the projects should be treated separately or together under NSR. EPA's proposal will establish much simpler criteria to guide this determination.
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