EPA’s Revised NHSM Rule favours C&D waste for biomass
CMRA says revision relieves huge burden for recyclers
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's recently released a revised Boiler MACT rule includes C&D waste as a Non Hazardous Secondary Material (NHSM). The revision specifies the agency’s belief that C&D wood meets all the criteria for exemption from the Boiler MACT rule, which the Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA) says relieves a huge potential regulatory and paperwork burden for C&D recyclers who make biomass, and their boiler customers. This is something the CMRA Issues & Education Fund had been working toward for more than a year.
Specifically in the 500 –page document, the agency wrote: "However, we would like to note two additional NHSMs—paper recycling residuals and construction and demolition wood processed pursuant to best practices that, based on information provided to the agency, we now believe are good candidates and expect to propose categorical listings in 40 CFR 241.4(a) in the near future for these two materials."
EPA is basing this decision on information provided by the CMRA Issues & Education Fund in partnership with the Biomass Power Association (BPA). The two organizations gathered the results of chemical testing data on C&D wood fuel from across the United States and showed that the contaminant levels in the material were at levels acceptable to the EPA.
Later in the document, under the heading “Construction and Demolition Wood Processed Pursuant to Best Practices,” was this: “The second of these NHSMs is construction and demolition (C&D) wood processed pursuant to best practices and produced and managed under the oversight of a comprehensive collection system or contractual arrangement. In the March 2011 final rule, we determined that C&D wood that is sufficiently processed can be a non-waste fuel.136 The Agency has received additional information since the issuance of that rule on specific best management practices used by suppliers/processors of C&D wood. Such practices include processing to remove contaminants. EPA believes the information received to date would tend to support a listing of these materials as a categorical non-waste fuel and expects to propose that listing in a subsequent rulemaking.”
The EPA made their determinations in part based on a document the CMRA submitted on processing that showed the material was not a waste, but part of a system of recovery, sorting, and processing the wood into a product and a commodity with value. Conversely, the CMRA said, environmental groups have long taken issue with the use of C&D wood as fuel, and did provide comments to EPA regarding the matter.
Following is what they submitted, as well as EPA’s response, as documented in the rule: "Environmental groups, on the other hand, commented that the EPA must require testing for contaminants, citing the extremely variable nature of C&D wood as a problem. Commenters expressed concern that a large amount of material is going to be generated as abandoned and foreclosed housing is torn down, and the potential for liberating vast amounts of lead and other urban toxics, to say nothing of arsenic and chromium from pressure treated wood, has never been higher.
EPA response: Based on a review of the comments received, the EPA is maintaining its position that contaminant testing is not required in all situations. Requiring testing in some situations is unnecessary. Where a NHSM generator, processor or combustor knows a contaminant will either not be present or be present at a level below that in the appropriate traditional fuel or traditional product, the agency believes it is a reasonable and practical policy to allow persons to rely on either process knowledge or previous testing of the same material. The agency notes that there will be instances where testing is conducted and comparisons will have to account for the variability of contaminant levels in NHSMs, including lead concentrations in C&D wood. The agency also notes that today’s final rule does not change its previously stated position that chromated copper arsenate-treated wood (CCA wood) would likely have contaminant levels not comparable to traditional fuels."
The CMRA says that what this response means is that EPA expects that based on current industry practices as outlined by the CMRA/BPA coalition, both the recyclers and the combustors are able to maintain a satisfactorily low level of contaminants.
The CMRA and BPA plan to continue to work together to ensure the rulemaking proceeds as EPA has outlined. A full copy of all the Boiler MACT rules is available at www.epa.gov/airquality/combustion/actions.html, or the relevant document can be received from CMRA; [email protected].
C&D World, the Annual Meeting, Exhibition and Conference of the CMRA, will be held April 20-23, 2013, at the Tampa Convention Center.
