Senate Bill No. 354
(By Senator Wiedebusch)
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[Introduced March 17, 1997; referred to the Committee
on Energy, Industry and Mining; and then to the Commmittee on the
Judiciary.]
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A BILL to amend article five, chapter twenty-two of the code of
West Virginia, one thousand nine hundred thirty-one, as
amended, by adding thereto a new section, designated section
eighteen, relating to requiring the director of the division
of environmental protection to promulgate legislative rules
allowing for facility-wide and multi-unit alternate emission
control strategies.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That article five, chapter twenty-two of the code of West
Virginia, one thousand nine hundred thirty-one, as amended, be
amended by adding thereto a new section, designated section
eighteen, to read as follows:
ARTICLE 5. AIR POLLUTION CONTROL.
§22-5-18. Bubble control strategies; director to promulgate rules.
(a) Within ninety days after the effective date of this
section, the director shall promulgate, to the fullest extent
allowed by federal law, a generic air emission's bubble rule that
includes all elements necessary to obtain approval from the
United States environmental protection agency to administer the
program. The generic air emission's bubble rule shall eliminate
the need for case-by-case federal determinations on individual
emission trades within a bubble as individual state
implementation plan revisions. For purposes of promulgating a
generic air emission's bubble rule the term "bubble" means an
air pollution control strategy which is requested by a facility
owner or operator and allows multiunit aggregate emission limits
to be established within a facility, in lieu of unit-specific
emission limits, on a pollutant-specific basis. A bubble may be
established for all units at a facility, or multiple bubbles may
be created for groups of units at a facility. The application of
a bubble to a facility shall allow emissions at one or more units
to fluctuate within the bubble as long as the multiunit limit is
not exceeded. Multiunit limits shall be established by
aggregating unit-specific limits for all new or existing units
being included in the bubble. The bubble shall also allow the
director to establish, at the request of the owner or operator of
a facility, alternative emission limits for individual units as long as the aggregated emissions limit for all involved units is
not increased.
(b) Emissions from units that are not subject to regulation
for the pollutant for which the bubble is created, and emissions
from units that are considered insignificant or trivial sources
under rules of the division implementing Title V of the Federal
Clean Air Act, may not be considered for purposes of determining
compliance with bubble limits.
(c) Emissions of pollutants for which national ambient air
quality standards have been established may not be considered for
purposes of determining compliance with bubble limits unless the
potential to emit the pollutants is greater than one ton per year
or one pound per hour for any pollutant:
Provided, That all
emissions of the pollutants from units that are not considered
for purposes of determining compliance with bubble limits may not
exceed ten thousand pounds per year within a bubble. Emissions
of other pollutants from a unit that are less than one-tenth
pound per hour or two hundred pounds per year may not be
considered for purposes of determining compliance with bubble
limits, unless the emission of that pollutant from that unit is
subject to a rule adopted under this article:
Provided, however,
That emissions of the pollutants from units that are not
considered for purposes of determining compliance with bubble
limits may not exceed one thousand pounds per year within a bubble.
(d) The term "facility" means all emission's units that are
located on one or more contiguous or adjacent properties that are
under common control of the same person or persons.
(e) The term "unit" means the point at which pollutants are
released to the ambient air.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to add provisions to the
act to require the promulgation of rules to allow sources to use
facility-wide and multiunit pollutant control approaches to
achieve required emission's reductions as an alternative to
unit-by-unit controls.
This section is new; therefore, strike-throughs and
underscoring have been omitted.