COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE
FOR
Senate Bill No. 152
(By Senators Schoonover, Love, Dittmar, Anderson,
Bowman, Helmick, Ross, Walker, Buckalew, Sharpe,
Boley, Plymale and Blatnik)
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[Originating in the Committee on Energy, Industry and Mining;
reported February 26, 1996.]
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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
seventeen, 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
seventeen, to read as follows:
ARTICLE 5. AIR POLLUTION CONTROL.
§22-5-17. Bubble control strategies; director to promulgate
rule.
(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 emissions bubble rule that
includes all elements necessary to obtain approval from the
United States environmental protection agency to administer the
program. The generic air emissions bubble rule shall eliminate
the need for case-by-case federal determinations on individual
emissions trades within a bubble as individual state
implementation plan revisions.
(b) For purposes of promulgating a generic air emissions
bubble rule:
(1) The term "bubble" shall mean an air pollution control
strategy which is requested by a facility owner or operator and
allows multi-unit 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 multi-unit limit is not
exceeded. Multi-unit 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 department 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.
(2) 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, shall not be considered for purposes of
determining compliance with bubble limits.
(3) Emissions of pollutants for which national ambient air
quality standards have been established shall not be considered
for purposes of determining compliance with bubble limits unless
the potential to emit such pollutants is greater than one ton per
year or one pound per hour for any such pollutant:
Provided, That
all emissions of such 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
shall 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 such 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.
(4) The term "facility" shall mean all emissions units that
are located on one or more contiguous or adjacent properties that
are under common control of the same person or persons.
(5) The term "unit" shall mean the point at which
pollutants are released to the ambient air.
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(This section is new; therefore, strike-throughs and
underscoring have been omitted.)