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UP FRONT
2 Agencies Ink New Guidance Pact
Top management with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) Region V office have belatedly affixed their signatures to the sixth performance partnership agreement (PPA) between the two agencies. USEPA uses PPAs to delineate the roles of state environmental agencies and establish priorities (both regulatory and enforcement) for the year (see IEC 10/98, p. 3). And this year’s PPA, which is supposed to track USEPA’s federal fiscal year, points to ongoing friction between USEPA and IEPA over portions of Illinois’ environmental self-audit and amnesty provisions in section 31 of the Illinois Environmental Protection Act. It also highlights ongoing USEPA concerns over Illinois’ innovative proportionate share liability law (415 ILCS 5/58.9). Those two issues have been the subject of heated exchanges between USEPA and IEPA in the past (see IEC 1/99, p. 2) and the new PPA signals that the disagreement may be around awhile longer.
The new pact calls for both agencies to continue to coordinate responsibilities for joint actions in the compliance and enforcement area but adds a new demand that IEPA evaluate existing enforcement response plans "to ensure timely and appropriate enforcement can be conducted." The new PPA differs from past versions in the high emphasis it now places on the sharing of enforcement information between the agencies and a renewed request for coordinating enforcement activities. IEPA and USEPA must now identify potential enforcement cases where inconsistency with national enforcement response policies or state environmental compliance strategies are potential problems or where coordination between IEPA and USEPA "is essential." Staffers with each agency must now discuss "and attempt to agree on the appropriate response" for alleged violations "and the appropriate agency to take the lead role." The new PPA also places increased emphasis on scrutinizing facilities in three of USEPA Region V’s high priority locations — metropolitan Chicago, Lake Michigan, and the East St. Louis area. It also wants greater IEPA emphasis on "facilities appropriate for multi-media inspections in the greater Chicago initiative (GCI) area." The GCI focuses on Cook County, particularly the environmental justice areas on the southeast and west sides of Chicago. Facilities in these areas will be discussed at a "senior enforcement managers meeting" that consists of compliance staffers from IEPA, Cook County, the City of Chicago, USEPA and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. Individual compliance assurance and enforcement cases are discussed at these meetings and facilities are nominated for sweeping, top-to-bottom multi-media inspections.
Another new item in this year’s PPA is the one-stop reporting project. The pact calls for IEPA to develop a 120-day plan to address the one-stop building blocks in the context of improvement to be made to IEPA’s information management and integration systems over the next three to five years (see IEC 2/01, p. 6). The intent involves centralized facility files that will contain information for each Illinois facility’s compliance, enforcement and permitting data — regardless of medium. This approach represents a dramatic departure from past practices where facilities were tracked only as far as a particular medium (air, waste water).
The new PPA is used to manage monies awarded to IEPA by USEPA under the federal agency’s performance partnership grant (PPG) system. The goal of the PPG strategy is to provide more flexibility in the use of federal funds and to reduce the administrative burden of having to manage numerous categorical grants. For accounting purposes, this year’s PPA has consolidated regulatory innovation, pollution prevention and environmental education into one program while merging community relations components into applicable specific media programs, i.e., the air land and water bureaus.
IEPA won several significant concessions from USEPA when finalizing this year’s PPA. One involves USEPA’s cessation of reviewing draft/proposed Title V air operating permits for several sources. IEPA says that there are 51 unissued permits for sources that took a 15 ton per season limit to avoid participation in the Chicago area’s emission reduction market system (ERMS) program. USEPA has in the past subjected draft permits for these sources to a higher level of scrutiny based on that facility’s standard industrial classification (SIC) code. IEPA says that USEPA would "free up time to work on higher priority permits" if it refrained from scrutinizing permits for these potential ERMS sources. IEPA’s Bureau of Land also won a commitment from USEPA on the conduct of future file reviews conducted by the federal agency. USEPA uses file reviews to satisfy itself that the state environmental agency is appropriately documenting permitting and compliance activities. A compliance file audit USEPA conducted last June at IEPA required the state agency to expend one month’s worth of full time work (over 150 staff hours) because USEPA selected a large number of facility files to review. This was aggravated by the fact that the facilities that USEPA wanted to see files for were facilities that extensive compliance/enforcement histories. IEPA has asked USEPA to limit future file reviews to just 20 facilities annually.
Programmatic requirements
The new PPA calls for a variety of tasks to be completed by specific IEPA programs. IEPA has committed to develop a process for the annual systems performance review for judging the success of its ERMS program. Its air bureau will focus on inspection efforts on ethanol plants, municipal waste combustors and hospital and infectious waste incinerators, as well as coal-fired utilities, refineries, printing/publishing sources, hazardous organic NESHAP (HON) sources, chemical sector sources and mini-mills.
IEPA’s land bureau and USEPA will evaluate the use of a risk assessment by Trade Waste Incineration, Inc., of Sauget as a condition of its permit renewal. It will also review permit renewals applications for McWhorter’s Carpentersville facility and Akzo Chemical’s facility in Morris. Illinois hazardous waste inspectors will also conduct 300 "compliance assistance surveys" and compliance evaluation inspections (CEIs) and issue non-compliance advisories and violation notices, "where appropriate." Of the 90 facilities in Illinois that actively treat, store and/or dispose of hazardous waste, land bureau inspectors will visit 66 of them. These visits will take the form of CEIs, compliance schedule evaluations, comprehensive groundwater monitoring evaluations, operation and maintenance inspections, closure verification inspections and financial record reviews. IEPA’s land bureau will also inspect 100 generators regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Many of those generators (see IEC 4/01, p. 19) will be targeted based on a number of factors, including compliance, history, production of hazardous waste containing persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) constituents, whether they are "new" generators, small quantity generators outside the Des Plaines region, and whether they filed a 1998 hazardous waste annual report indicating they are an active large quantity generator (LQG) of hazwaste. IEPA says that the LQG universe has been inspected, in some of its regions, during the last two to three years. In such instances IEPA will focus on other categories of RCRA generators that meet one or more of the above-described criteria.
Officials with IEPA’s land bureau say that during the coming year they will work hard to transfer from the state to USEPA responsibility for permitting and inspection of underground injection wells used by businesses to dispose of their nonhazardous waste (see related item in this issue’s Regulatory Roundup). One on-site injection well at Equistar’s Tuscola facility has already been permitted for disposal of liquid nonhazardous waste.
IEPA’s water bureau will continue its five-year effort to reduce the backlog in the number of national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permit applications awaiting action. As of last September, the most recent numbers available, IEPA had a backlog of expired NPDES permits of 22 percent for all permits and 20 percent for major permits. Those numbers represent a significant improvement over past years when the expired NPDES permit rate reached as high as 45 percent; nevertheless, the improvement can be attributed to a greater IEPA reliance on issuing general permits rather than acting on individual expired permits. In reducing the backlog IEPA says it will now place a greater emphasis on processing NPDES renewals for facilities with discharges to impacted watersheds with point source impacts. IEPA faces an end of year deadline to reduce the NPDES backlog for major dischargers to no more than 10 percent but has already acknowledged it will not meet that goal. It further conceded that it will likely miss a December 31, 2004 target for eradicating the backlog completely. Instead it says it will meet this year’s goal by the end of 2004. IEPA’s water bureau, in a marked shift, indicated that the Illinois attorney general’s office in future cases may seek to intervene in water quality enforcement cases brought against Illinois facilities by the U.S. Department of Justice — a drastic departure from past practice when IEPA left the federal government to its own gimmicks in enforcement actions against Illinois facilities.
4 Groups Ignite Controversy Over Coal
5 Outages Exacerbate Supply Problems
PRAIRIE STATE BRIEFS
State seeks help ... Compromise sought ...
Expansion attacked ... All begin on page 8
REGULATORY ROUNDUP
10 RCRA, UIC Proposal Goes Forward
11 IPCB Responds To USEPA’s Gripes
11 Harsh Words On Emissions Testing
ENFORCEMENT REPORT
12 Federal Enforcement
12 Downstate Refiner Does Big Deal
13 RCRA Charges Settled, Air Charge Filed
14 Morris Firm Reaches Agreement
14 FOV For Georgetown Facility
15 Self-Audit Helps LTV Copperweld
15 Federal Judge Rules Against Rock Island
16 Hyde Park Cited For Lead-based Paint
16 State Enforcement
16 Big Spill Nets Bigger Penalty
17 Festive Settlement Reached
17 Asbestos Penalty Upstate
18 Champaign Facility Cited For Emissions
19 Water Violations At Development
COMPLIANCE LIBRARY
23 Air, Permitting, Waste Cleanup And Other Titles
WEB SPECIAL: LINKS FROM PAST STORIES
USEPA Says OK To IEPA’s ERMS Program
Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) Region V office in Chicago on December 15 went forward with a rulemaking action proposing to approve Illinois’ innovative trading program for the control of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the Chicago metropolitan ground-level ozone nonattainment area. This is the first "cap and trade" program in the nation that a state has adopted to reduce VOC emissions. The program is mandatory for major VOC sources in the Chicago metropolitan area and its upper limit threshold ("cap") means that, on average, affected sources must reduce their VOC emissions by 12 percent. Regardless of the cap, individual sources may nevertheless trade emission allowances amongst themselves, provided the buying and selling of allowances yields the same overall 12 percent VOC emission reduction. The program, which is administered by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA), is an important element of the state’s plan for meeting the ozone standard in the Chicago metropolitan area. The proposal was published in the December 27 issue of the Federal Register, commencing a 30-day public review and comment period. USEPA sources told IEC that the comment period will likely be extended for another 45 days beyond the original deadline. USEPA’s plan to approve IEPA’s emission reduction market system (ERMS) is likely to be bitterly attacked by environmental activists. IEPA staffers meanwhile are still reviewing the results from last summer, the ERMS program’s first season after the IEPA abruptly delayed the program’s planned debut in 1999 (see IEC 11/98, p. 2). The Metro Chicago ground-level ozone nonattainment area includes Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will Counties, Oswego Township in Kendall County and Aux Sable and Goose Lake Townships in Grundy County. Metro Chicago currently does not meet the national ambient air quality standard for ground-level ozone (smog) and is classified by USEPA as a "severe" nonattainment area. Subscribers desiring additional information on USEPA’s proposed approval of Illinois’ ERMS program for the control of VOCs in the Metro Chicago ozone nonattainment area should click here.
IEPA Likes Chicago Regional Air Plan
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) director Tom Skinner has come out in support of an innovative new plan developed by the Chicago Regional Dialogue on Clean Air and Redevelopment (CRD) coalition and the Chicago Department of Environment (CDOE) aimed at relieving new source review (NSR) headaches for stationary sources locating or expanding in "smart growth areas" of the Chicago ground-level ozone nonattainment area. New or expanding businesses who locate in a smart growth zone in the region would have access to emissions credits from the growth allowance instead of having to purchase them on the market. Emissions credits for the growth allowance would come from local government actions which are currently not accounted for in the state implementation plan (SIP). The proposal has been submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) for its review as a potential candidate for the agency’s Project XL (eXcellence and Leadership) program (see IEC 7/00, p. 8). If the proposal passes USEPA’s muster, and early indications are that it will, it would give a boost to economic development efforts in the affected area while easing the cumbersome air permitting process facilities operating in the area face. Complete details on the proposed XL project involving NSR offsets for the Chicago metropolitan ozone nonattainment are available here. Meanwhile, USEPA’s "notice of availabiltiy of FPA" can be found here. Skinner, in a July 12 letter, endorsed the idea behind CDOE's proposal.
Ryan Punts Problematic Peakers To Pollution Board
Illinois Governor George H. Ryan on July 6 tackled the continuing controversy over auxiliary peak usage electric power plants by telling the state’s Pollution Control Board to deal with the problem. In a June 6 letter to the seven members of the Illinois Pollution Control Board (IPCB), Ryan told the political appointees "I have recently received a great deal of public comment over potential environmental threats caused by the recent proliferation in Illinois of new, natural gas-fired, peak-load electrical power generating facilities." He then instructed the IPCB to convene hearings on the issue to see what, if anything, will be done to silence upset lawmakers from the northern suburbs and their constituents. The governor’s passing of the problem to the IPCB followed unsuccessful efforts by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) to enlist the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) help in defraying the growing political fallout the issue has caused (see IEC 5/00, p. 5). IEPA director Tom Skinner had asked USEPA for "guidance" on imposing tougher new source performance standards (NSPS) permitting requirements on many of the newly proposed peaker plants. USEPA responded to Skinner’s overtures by saying, in effect, "the ball is in your court," where it has been since the issue of peakers, permits and associated problems first emerged (see IEC 2/99, p. 3). Everything that you wanted to know about peaker plants in Illinois is available here.
IEPA, USEPA At Work On New PPA
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) and USEPA have negotiated a new "performance partnership agreement" (PPA) that will guide environmental protection, monitoring, permitting and enforcement efforts in Illinois during the coming year. Full text of the 171-page deal is available here.
Illinois RMPs Go Public
Risk management plans (RMPs) required under section 112(r) of the federal Clean Air Act were submitted by 961 Illinois facilities on June 21. The RMPs, which detail possible catastrophic effects from a "worst-case" industrial mishap, were supposed to enjoy limited public disclosure. An environmental interest group however has made all the Illinois RMPs available here.
Illinois Environmental Compliance is the state's sole source of independent business-related environmental regulatory and compliance data. Subject matter (no advertisements accepted) is limited to administrative, legal and public policy developments impacting commercial activities conducted in Illinois. Published monthly by Compliance Publishers, Inc., Chicago, Illinois. A limited number of annual subscriptions are available for $375.00 per year.
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