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Show Page 6 The Utah Independent January 9, 1975 The Paper That Dares To Take A Stand UNTIMELY, UNREASONABLE, UNECONOMIC, UNSCIENTIFIC AND UNLAWFUL our facility. We were already using acid plants to reduce sulfur emissions, and had been doing so for many years when there was no EPA and no Federal law required us to do so. But that was not enough to permit us to meet the new ambient air quality standards. We had to improve on existing technology go beyond what was available to devise a system that would be better than any other in the country a system that would permit us to continue our massive production without violating the ambient air quality standards. Our planned revisions to the Garfield smelter will achieve this goal, and in September of 1973 we submitted our compliance plan to the EPA. That plan called for the expenditure of $ 75 million to capture 86 of our sulfur input and provide, in addition, a supplementary control system to insure that even under the most adverse meteorological conditions we would meet the ambient air quality standards. Ever since that time wre have been hard at work on the design and construction and other steps necessary for us to put our compliance plan into effect by July of 1977. which is the deadline for meeting the ambient air quality standards under the law. We are on a tight schedule, but we hope to make the deadline and believe that we can. That hope and that belief would go out the window if we had to comply with the regulation the EPA is proposing here. It is too late to go back to the drawing board and start revising our compliance plan now. We cannot turn the clock back to 1972 and start redesigning our smelter to meet unrealistic requirements that were first proposed by EPA in October of 1974. that would presumably become final in 197S, and that would have to be met by July of 1977. If we are to meet the ambient air quality standards by the 1977 deadline, we must proceed with our present compliance plan without interruption, and that's exactly what we intend to do. The alternative suggested by the EPA in this hearing is not only untimely, it is unreasonable. The emission limitation the EPA seeks to impose on Kennecott's Utah smelter is much stricter than the EPA requires of copper smelters in other states, including Nevada. New Mexico and Texas. For example, just last week the EPA held hearings in Nevada on a regulation for Kennecotts smelter at McGill, and the emission limitation proposed there by EPA was 31.900 pounds of S02 per hour, or six times the amount EPA is proposing for our smelter here. Thats a 60 sulfur capture requirement for Nevada compared to the 95 proposed here. 1 the emission limitation proposed for Utah is even stricter than the EPA is proposing for modification of existing plants under its New Source Standards. Under those standards, which arc supposed to be based on best available control technology, we could have chosen to modify our Utah smelter without doing away with our reverberatory furnaces and operated under an emission limitation of 60.000 pounds of S02 per hour with 60 sulfur capture. Because we chose not to do that, but to go beyond available Moreover, control technology to make our smelter the best and cleanest in the country, we are being penalized by subjected to stricter limitations than anyone else with being no explanation of why such restrictions are required. We are convinced that no such explanation can be provided because there is no doubt in our minds that when we have completed the construction described in our compliance plan we will be meeting the national ambient air quality standards at all times, and most of the time our emissions will be far below the levels required to meet ambient air quality standards, even though these emissions will be above the levels the EPA would permit under its proposed regulation. The reason for this is basic to understanding why we think the EPAs approach to enforcing the Clean Air Act is erroneous. The EPA approach is premised on the policy that a smelter should be designed so as to permit it to meet the ambient air standards at all times with no production curtailment, and on the as- sumption that there is an fixed emission achievable limitation which can produce that result. We differ with the EPA on both aspects of its premise. There are days when the meteorological conditions are so unfavorable that no achievable fixed emission limitation can assure that ambient air quality standards will be met without production curtailment. These days are few and far between, amounting to perhaps no more than one percent of the time, or three or four days per year. On those few days the emission limitation required to meet the am- -, bient air quality standards approaches zero or may even be zero. Neither we nor anyone else knows how to build a smelter with zero or almost zero emissions, so it is futile to approach the problem of meeting ambient air quality standards by the EPA method of giving consideration to fixed emission limitations only and insisting upon the maximum emission limitations possible at all times. That approach cannot be successful in the present state of the art of smelting. Moreover, such an approach is completely uneconomic. The objective is to meet ambient air quality standards by adoption of a control strategy for sulfur dioxide e that is and takes into consideration the economic impact of the strategy, including the impact on availability of fuels and energy. This is stipulated in the EPAs own regulations governing State Implementation Plans in Section 5 .2 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The courts have also held that the EPA must give consideration to ratios in and resource availability judging compliance plans, as well as fuel and energy consumption and other considerations of broad environmental impact. National policy also requires conservation of fuel and energy, as Congress has recently emphasized in the Energy cost-effectiv- 1 cost-bene- Supply and fit Environmental Coordination Act of 1974. The EPA proposal for the Utah smelter ignores all of these Economic and environmental factors, contrary to their own regulations, the decisions of. the courts and the will of Congress. This is the inevitable result of blindly following a maximum constant emission reduction approach to achieving compliance with ambient air quality standards without regard to analysis and energy conservation. To illustrate this point concretely in terms of the Utah smelters operations, consider what the EPA's proposal would do to us. Meeting a 5400 pound per hour limitation is impossible without cutting production in half. The EPA says our smelter will meet the 5400 pound limitation because, they say. our emissions will be only 4400 pounds per hour. That is simOur smelter will ply not so. produce a wide range of emissions, ranging from 10.666 pounds per hour to as much as 126.100 pounds per hour, depending on operating conditions that fluctuate from hour to hour and day to day. Taking these operating conditions into account over a full year, we expect to achieve an average of 86 emission control, not the 95 control ' required by the EPA proposal. And 1 want to emphasize that 86 figure is an average, computed over a period of time which includes periods when capture will be above or below 86. The EPA proposal fails to take these fluctuations into account because they use an hourly limitation figure. We understand that they intend to revise their regulations in the future to take into account some of the fluctuations by inserting a provision that the emission limitations would not apply during periods of startmalfunction and up, shut-dowmaintenance. That would make the proposal more tolerable, but it reaises serious questions as to the validity of their proposal. If they are correct in their assertion that we need to meet a 5400 pound per hour emission limitation at all times in order to meet ambient air quality standards, how can they excuse us from that limitation? Are they proposing to give us a license to violate the law? The short answer is that it is not necessary for us to meet a 5400 pound per hour emission limitation in order to meet ambient air quality standards except on a very few days of the year when conditions are meteorological extremely unfavorable, and the EPA knows that as well as we do. That is why their approach is totally uneconomic. They want us to design and operate the smelter in a way that will reduce emissions all the time to a point far below what is needed most of the time, and the costs involved in doing that would be sheer economic waste of both money and scarce energy, contributing nothing to ambient air quality. In this regard, the EPAs approach to our acid plant situation is particularly offensive. Their contention that our smelter can meet the 5400 pound per hour limitation is based on an assumed acid plant conversion efficiency of 97 for three existing plants and 99.5. for the new acid plant we arc The actual efconstructing. ficiencies for these acid plants are expected to vary from 93 for thfr oldest plant to 97.5 for the new one. The only way we could achieve the acid plant efficiencies the EPA used in its calculations would be to redesign the whole system. That would be ridiculous for three reasons: First, we cannot start such a cost-bene- fit n, program now and meet the ambient air quality standards by the 1977 deadline. Second, the improvement in acid plant efficiency would make little or no contribution to ambient air quality, and might even make it worse. To improve the conversion efficiency of our acid plants we would have to go to double contact plants. That would double our maintenance and malfunction problems and reduce acid plant availability, which is a far more important factor than conversion efIf we lost only 3.5 ficiency. availability, which would be a miracle, we would be emitting more S02 with double contact plants than ufe will under our some curtailment required on a few days out of the year. Because we cun meet the ambient air quality standards at this emission level, it would be unlawful for the EPA to promulgate the stricter level that it As we read the has proposed. Clean Air Act. the EPA is required to approve State Implementation Plans if they contain a control strategy which will assure that national ambient air quality standards will be attained and maintained. Such assurance is provided by the State of Uah Im plementation Plan, in its 1972 form or as proposed for amendment at the State hearing next month, and is further provided by the Kennccott compliance plan submitted to both the State and the EPA pursuant to the State Plan. Therefore, we believe that the EPA is w ithout authority to supplant the Utah State Implementation Plan present plan. Third, designing to achieve the EPA's acid plant efficiencies would be wasteful of two scarce resources capital and energy. It would require additional capital expenditures of S 8 million and additional operating expenses of and impose the substitute provision that has been proposed. S3.400.000 annually. It would reWe have other legal objections to quire additional electrical power of 57,000.000 the EPAs proposal here, and will consumption kilowatts annually and additional submit them in our comments fuel oil consumption of 4.089.000 following this hearing. However, in order to make these comments gallons annually. That's enough and fully responsive to money, electricity and oil to build a meaningful fair size city, supply it with power the EPA proposal, we need the and heat and put everybody in it on answers to some questions that we obtain by cross a lifetime pension. Thats if we cannot could obtain the fuel oil and elec- examination due to the procedural tricity. which we cant. And if we limitations placed on this hearing by the EPA. Accordingly. 1 would could, it would mean causing additional pollution to produce the like to close by listing the most basic of these questions and reelectricity and transport the oil. So we flatly reject any questing that they be answered proposal that we start redesigning either now or soon enough to our smelter at this late date to permit us to use the answers in achieve some magic acid plant ef- preparing our further comments. ficiency number that is absolutely There are nine such questions: 1. Does EPA claim that meaningless. To add to the folly of the EPA Kennecotts proposed S02 control proposal, it is unscientific. The strategy for its Utah smelter will 5400 pound per hour limitation not result in compliance with apwas set by use of a diffusion model plicable ambient air standards? 2. Does EPA claim that that is defective and overestimates ambient air quality concentrations the State of Utah Implementation Plan, either in its 1972 form or as by as much as ,500 percent. That diffusion model has been widely now being proposed and set for criticized by experts as too hearing on January 9. designed to control S02 emissions from unreliable to use for setting emission limitations for sources located Kennecotts Utah smelter, will not result in compliance with apin rugged terrain such as w'e have here in Utah. The EPA itself replicable ambient air standards? 3. Has EPA determined jected this diffusion model in setting the emission limitation for our what new or different facilities Nevada smelter in hearings held must be added to Kennecotts present smelter project to comply just last week. And the EPA recenwith the regulations here tly withdrew its proposal to require installation of scrubbers on Utah proposed? Power and Lights Huntington 4. Has EPA determined difbecause this Canyon plant what effect there would be on amfusion modeling approach was bient air quality if Kennecott were proved to be defective by the to reduce emission levels to 5400 Governments own experts, the pounds per hour? National Oceanic and At5. Has EPA considered mospheric Administration. These the amount of energy required to same experts have studied our reduce emission levels to 5400 Garfield smelter situation and pounds per hour? found the same defects in applying 6. Has EPA considered the EPA diffusion model to us. I the environmental and economic will not go into the details of this impact of obtaining and conbecause will we subject have tessuming the energy needed to timony by experts in meteorology reduce emission levels to 5400 and diffusion modeling later in the pounds per hour? hearing. But I just want to make 7. Has EPA determined clear our position that diffusion whether or not the consumption of modeling is too inexact a science to energy required to reduce emission use in designing smelters to meet levels to 5400 pounds per hour is in ambient air quality standards, and the national interest as defined by thats why we rejected that apthe Federal Energy Act? proach in designing ours and used 8. Has El A determined empirical data and actual whether or not the energy and fuel measurements instead. T hese data required to reduce emission levels led us to conclude that we can meet to 5400 pounds per hour will be the ambient air quality standards available to the extent needed? at an annual average emission level 9. Has EPA determined of 250 tons per day of S02 with the imn;rt of future unavailability Continued on page 7 1 1 |