The hearing before the WV Air Quality Board over our appeal of the air permit for the TransGas Coal-To-Liquids plant was held Wed & Thursday. I just got off a conference call with some folks over the results.
The comment below reflect my understanding of what happened, so someone please correct me if I get it wrong.
Basically, the AQB listened carefully to our arguments, and appeared to grasp some key points made by our wonderful attorney, Elena Saxonhouse.
One of our major issues is the claim by DEP & TransGas that the facility is a "Minor Source" rather than a "Major Source". Major Sources have significantly more stringent requirements for an air permit, including requirements that the facility model pollutant dispersion, and that they determine the "Best Available Control Technology" (BACT). TransGas did not include certain emissions in their application, which kept them under the threshold for Major Source. DEP approved the permit as submitted by TransGas, arguing that any emissions not included in the permit would be violations of the permit. Our concern is that, once the plant is built, these emissions could be added to the permit as a minor modification and they would continue operating as a major source without meeting the intent of the Clean Air Act.
One major source of emissions is a "flare" used to burn off waste gases. Unfortunately, flares are inherently hard to monitor, and DEP simply assumed that the emissions would be small and therefore the facility as a whole would meet the Minor Source limit. The Air Quality Board seemed receptive to our argument that, to be adequately protective, the air permit had to either measure the emissions to show they were under the limit, or they would have to assume that they could be larger than DEP assumed.
Another major source is that Transgas never included emissions from a wastewater treatment plant. They argued that the plant has not been designed yet, and that they may ship the water off site to another facility, and therefore the emissions should not be included in their air permit. We argued that simply omitting the emissions from a required step in the process was not permitted under the Clean Air Act, as it would allow any major source to avoid major source requirements simply by segmenting the facility into tiny little parts, when the whole facility was still a major source.
While the Air Quality Board listened carefully to two full days of testimony, and we have good legal arguments, we should not assume that the AQB is a friendly body. Closing briefs will be filed over the next few weeks, so we do not expect a decision for a couple months.
On a related note, I hope you all saw the announcement this week by Gov. Manchin that TransGas had settled on an "engineering and procurement contractor". In addition, they had reached an agreement with the Affiliated Construction Trades union to assure that the plant would be built by union labor.
We remain very skeptical that this plant would ever get financing, and it was not clear that the EPC contractor or anyone else has actually committed to building anything. The facility's air permit is under challenge (by us), none of the other needed permit applications have even been submitted, and many key features still do not have a final design (e.g., waste water treatment). So even if the air permit were approved, they are still a long way from ever getting anything built.
We should not assume we have already lost, but neither should we take for granted that such a crazy idea will be easily rejected.
Endless pressure, endlessly applied!
Jim Kotcon 304-2903-8822 (office) 304-594-3322 (home)