Senate Bill No. 152
(By Senators Schoonover, Love, Dittmar, Anderson,
Bowman, Helmick, Ross, Walker, Buckalew, Sharpe,
Boley, Plymale and Blatnik)
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[Introduced January 26, 1996; referred to the Committee
on Energy, Industry and Mining.]
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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
eighteen, requiring the director of the division of
environmental protection to promulgate legislative rules
allowing for facility-wide 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
eighteen, to read as follows:
ARTICLE 5. AIR POLLUTION CONTROL.
§22-5-18. Plant-wide control strategies; director to promulgate
regulations.
(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 with a single facility as individual state
implementation plan revisions. For purposes of promulgating a
generic air emissions bubble rule:
(1) The term "bubble" means an air pollution control
strategy which is requested by a facility owner or operator and
allows multiunit aggregate emission limits to be established
within a facility, in lieu of unit-specific emission limits, on
a pollutant-specific basis. The application of a bubble to a
facility would allow emissions at one or more emissions points or
units to fluctuate within a facility as long as the multiunit
limit is not exceeded. Multiunit 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) The term "facility" means 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.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to require the
promulgation of rules to allow sources to use plant-wide
pollutant control approaches to achieve required emissions
reductions as an alternative to unit-by-unit controls.
This section is new; therefore, strike-throughs and
underscoring have been omitted.