H. B. 4251
(By Delegates Pettit, Givens,
Smirl, Ennis and L. White)
[Introduced February 3, 1998; referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary.]
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, relating to requiring the director of the division
of environmental protection to promulgate legislative rules
allowing for facility-wide and multiunit 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. Bubble control strategies; director to promulgate rules.
(a) Within ninety days after the effective date of this
section, the director shall propose, 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 within a bubble as individual state
implementation plan revisions. For purposes of promulgating a
generic air emissions bubble rule 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. A bubble may be
established for all units at a facility, or multiple bubbles may
be created for groups of units at a facility. The application of
a bubble to a facility shall allow emissions at one or more units
to fluctuate within the bubble 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
director 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.
(b) Emissions from units that are not subject to regulation
for the pollutant for which the bubble is created, and emissions
from units that are considered insignificant or trivial sources
under rules of the division implementing Title V of the Federal
Clean Air Act, may not be considered for purposes of determining
compliance with bubble limits.
(c) Emissions of pollutants for which national ambient air
quality standards have been established may not be considered for
purposes of determining compliance with bubble limits unless the
potential to emit such pollutants is greater than one ton per
year or one pound per hour for any such pollutant: Provided,
That all emissions of such pollutants from units that are not
considered for purposes of determining compliance with bubble
limits may not exceed ten thousand pounds per year within a
bubble. Emissions of other pollutants from a unit that are less
than one-tenth pound per hour or two hundred pounds per year may
not be considered for purposes of determining compliance with
bubble limits, unless the emission of that pollutant from that
unit is subject to a rule adopted under this article: Provided,
however, That emissions of such pollutants from units that are
not considered for purposes of determining compliance with bubble limits may not exceed one thousand pounds per year within a
bubble.
(d) The term "facility" means all emission units that are
located on one or more contiguous or adjacent properties that are
under common control of the same person or persons.
(e) The term "unit" means the point at which pollutants are
released to the ambient air.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to require the
promulgation of rules to allow sources to use facility-wide and
multiunit 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.