Bush administration announces New Source Review program reforms. (Washington Alert).

In June, the U.S. EPA outlined its specific plans for reforming the Glean Air Act New Source Review (NSR) air pollution program. Under this new program, stationary sources (including foundries) may be required to install state-of-the-art pollution control equipment when they make major plant or process modifications. For the last 20 years, NSR has grown from a simple rule into 4000 pages of complex and burdensome requirements and guidance. NSR now is inefficient and a deterrent to the adoption of more efficient and cleaner technologies.

EPA will implement its new program changes in two phases. First, EPA will finalize the following reforms, which were originally proposed by the Clinton Administration in 1996:

* pollution control and prevention projects--create a simplified process for companies that undertake environmentally beneficial projects;

* plantwide applicability limits--institute site-wide emission caps to provide facilities with greater flexibility to modernize operations without triggering NSR;

* clean unit provision--provide plants that install "clean units" operational flexibility if they continue to operate within permitted limits;

* calculating emission increases and tablishing an actual emission baseline--calculate how much facilities actually will emit after proposed changes versus estimating emissions based on 24 hr/day year-round operations.

In the second phase, EPA will propose three additional changes that will go through a complete rulemaking and public comment process before being finalized. These include:

* routine maintenance, repair and replacement--clarify the definition of "routine" repairs and propose guidelines for specific industries to clearly establish what activities meet this standard;

* debottlenecking--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--establish criteria to guide facilities in determining when multiple projects that are implemented in a short period of time should be treated separately or together.

These regulatory reforms will be published in the Federal Register this fall.

For more in formation on these recommendations visit EPA's website at http://www.epa.gov/air/nsr-review.