Page 455 - Fundamentals of Air Pollution 3E

II. Titles 403

perwork. By supporting the state's permitting authority, a facility can sim-
plify the permitting process and avoid EPA intervention.
Each permit issued to a facility will be for a fixed term of up to 5 years.
The new law establishes a permit fee whereby the state collects a fee from
the permitted facility to cover reasonable direct and indirect costs of the
permitting program.
All sources subject to the permit program must submit a complete permit
application within 12 months of the effective date of the program. The
state permitting authority must determine whether or not to approve an
application within 18 months of the date it receives the application.
To ensure compliance with the standards, the permit also must contain
provisions for the inspection, entry, monitoring, certification, and reporting
of compliances with the permit conditions.
EPA has 45 days to review each permit and to object to permits that
violate the CAAA. If EPA fails to object to a permit that violates the Act
or the implementation plan, any person may petition EPA to object within
60 days following EPA's 45-day review period, and EPA must grant or
deny the permit within 60 days. Judicial review of EPA's decision on a
citizen's petition can occur in the federal court of appeals. The public is
guaranteed the right to inspect and review all permit applications and
documents. There are provisions for three kinds of permit revisions: admin-
istrative amendment, minor permit modification, and significant modifi-
cation.
These regulations will apply to an estimated 34,000 "major" industrial
sources. "Major" sources are defined according to their "potential to emit"
and the cutoff levels vary depending on both the pollutant and the local
areas' compliance status with the National Ambient Air Quality Standard
(NAAQS) for that pollutant. For the present, the EPA has exempted all
"nonmajor" sources, of which there are estimated to be about 350,000, from
this permitting, until they have studied further the feasibility of permitting
them. However, the states can require permitting of some of these sources.
The regulations provide for the collection of fees from permit seekers
and the states must require fees sufficient to cover the cost of administering
the program. If a state does not submit, properly administer, or enforce a
permit program, federal sanctions must be levied including the withholding
of highway funds and requiring offset pollution for new sources by reducing
emissions by 2 tons from existing sources for every 1 ton of emissions from
a proposed new source.
All permits must include a cap on emissions which cannot be exceeded
without an approved revision of the permit. Permitted sources must period-
ically test and monitor their emisisons and report on these activities every
6 months. Civil penalties include fines of not less than $10,000 per day for
permit violations and criminal penalties for deliberate false statements or
representations, or for rendering inaccurate any monitoring device or
method required in the permit.