ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING:ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

OVERVIEW

This chapter provides industrial, plant, and facilities engineers with a brief overview of some envi- ronmental engineering considerations in process and manufacturing operations. This information will be helpful to engineers who are designing or operating new industrial processes or involved in the modiﬁcation of existing facilities.

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

Overview

Regulations designed to protect and improve the environment play a substantial role in the design and management of industrial processes. These regulations should be incorporated into the initial process design and not as an afterthought. This section provides a brief overview of some major environmental laws and organizations.

Environmental Protection Act

Prior to the Environmental Protection Act, environmental regulations were divided along media lines (air, water, earth). In 1970, President Nixon submitted to Congress a proposal to consolidate many of the environmental duties previously administered by agencies including the Federal Water Quality Administration, the National Air Pollution Control Administration, the Bureau of Solid Waste Man- agement, the Bureau of Water Hygiene, the Bureau of Radiological Health; certain functions with respect to pesticides carried out by the Food and Drug Administration; certain functions of the Council on Environmental Quality; certain functions of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Radiation Council; and certain functions of the Agricultural Research Service (Nixon 1970a).

President Nixon recognized that some pollutants exist in all forms of media and that successful administration of pollution-control measures required the cooperation of many of the federal bureaus and councils. A more effective management method would be to recognize pollutants, observe their transport and transformation through each medium, observe how they interact with other pollutants, note the total presence of the pollutant and its effect on living and nonliving entities, and determine the most efﬁcient mitigation process. This multimedia approach required the creation of a new agency to assume the duties of many existing agencies, thus eliminating potential miscommunication and interdepartmental biases that could hinder environmental protection. Thus, the President recom- mended the establishment of an integrated federal agency that ultimately came to be called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The roles and functions of the EPA were to develop and enforce national standards for the protection of the environment; research the effects of pollutants, their concentrations in the environ- ment, and ways of controlling them; provide funding for research and technical assistance to insti- tutions for pollutant research, and propose new legislation to the President for protection of the environment (Nixon 1970b).

In the words of William D. Ruckelshaus, EPA’s ﬁrst administrator, EPA is an independent agency. It has no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment. It does not have a narrow charter to deal with only one aspect of a deteriorating environment; rather it has a broad responsibility for research, standard-setting, monitoring and enforcement with regard to ﬁve environmental hazards; air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, radiation, and pesticides. EPA represents a coordinated approach to each of these problems, guar- anteeing that as we deal with one difﬁculty we do not aggravate others. (Ruckelshaus 1970)

The EPA has instituted numerous programs and made signiﬁcant changes in the way businesses operate in the United States. A brief summary of the EPA’s milestones (Table 1) shows the many ways the course of business and the environment have been altered since the agency’s inception in 1970.

Clean Air Acts

Air Pollution Control Concept in the United States

Air pollution control in the United States is said to be a ‘‘command and control’’ regulatory approach to achieving clean air. That is, regulations are promulgated at the federal level and via state imple- mentation plans (SIPs) at the state level and air pollution sources are required (‘‘commanded’’) to comply. These regulations have been set up to operate on the air we breathe as well as the sources that produce the air pollution. The regulations established to control the air we breathe are called National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQSs). Their engineering units are concentration based, that is, micrograms-pollutant per cubic meter of air or parts per million by volume (ppmv). These NAAQSs also have a time-averaging period associated with them such as a 24-hour or an annual averaging period. Additionally, the NAAQSs have primary standards and secondary standards asso- ciated with them. The primary standards are for the protection of human health and the secondary standards are for the protection of things. For example, the primary 24-hour average standard for sulfur dioxide is 365 I-g/m3 and the secondary standard is a 3-hour average standard of 1300 I-g/m3. The 365 I-g/m3 standard protects humans from a high-level short-term dose of sulfur dioxide, while the 1300 I-g/m3 standard could protect a melon crop from a high-level, short-term dose of sulfur dioxide. Table 2 contains the NAAQSs for the six EPA criteria pollutants.

The other thrust of the air pollution regulations applies to the sources of the pollutants. These regulations are emission standards called the New Source Performance Standards (NSPSs). These sources include stationary sources such as power plants and industrial manufacturing operations as well as mobile sources such as automobiles, trucks, and aircraft. These regulations are mass ﬂow rate-based, that is, grams-pollutant / hr or lb-pollutant / 106 Btu. Pollutant-speciﬁc emission limits were

assigned to both existing sources and proposed new sources under the 1970 Clean Air Act. The existing-source emission limits were less stringent than the new source limits because new sources had the opportunity to incorporate the latest technology into the process or manufacturing design.

To determine what emission standards apply to your new proposed operation, refer to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 60, which is also Title I under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amend-

ments. The NSPSs are shown for a large number of industrial classiﬁcations. Look for your type of industry and you will ﬁnd the applicable new source emission standards.

The 1970 Clean Air Act

Control of outdoor air pollution in the United States certainly grew its regulatory roots prior to the 1970 Clean Air Act. However, for the practicing industrial engineer, the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act is the real beginning of contemporary outdoor or ambient air pollution control. Therefore, this section will focus on those aspects of the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the subsequent amendments of 1977 and 1990 that will be most meaningful to the industrial engineer.

The 1970 Clean Air Act was the ﬁrst piece of air pollution legislation in this country that had any real teeth. The establishment of an autonomous federal agency that ultimately came to be known as the EPA was a result of the 1970 Act. Prior to this time, matters relating to outdoor air pollution had their home in the United States Public Health Service. Furthermore, it is historically interesting to note that the EPA went through a number of name changes in the months following promulgation of the 1970 Clean Air Act before the current name was chosen.

The 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments

The 1970 Clean Air Act had a deadline of July 1, 1975, by which all counties in the United States were to comply with concentration-based standards (NAAQSs) for speciﬁed air pollutants. However, when July 1, 1975, arrived, very few counties in industrialized sections of the country met the standards. As a consequence, much debate took place in Congress and the result was the promulgation of the 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments. In some quarters, this amendment was viewed as the strongest piece of land use legislation the United States had ever seen. This legislation required each state to evaluate the air sheds in each of its counties and designate the counties as either attainment or non-attainment counties for speciﬁed air pollutants, according to whether the counties attained the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for those pollutants. If the state had insufﬁcient data, the county was designated unclassiﬁed. A company in a non-attainment county had to take certain steps to obtain an air permit. This ultimately added a signiﬁcant increased cost to a manu- factured product or the end result of a process.

Under this same amendment were provisions for ‘‘protecting and enhancing’’ the nation’s air resources. These provisions, called the Prevention of Signiﬁcant Deterioration (PSD) standards, pre- vented an industrial plant from locating in a pristine air shed and polluting that air shed up to the stated ambient air standard. They classiﬁed each state’s counties as to their economic status and air polluting potential and established ceilings and increments more stringent than the ambient air stan- dards promulgated under the 1970 Clean Air Act. No longer could a company relocate to a clean air region for the purpose of polluting up to the ambient air standard. In essence, the playing ﬁeld was now level.

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments

Due to a number of shortcomings in the existing air pollution regulations at the end of the 1980s, the Clean Air Act was again amended in 1990. The 1990 Clean Air Amendments contain a number of provisions, or titles, as they are referred to. These titles, some of which carry over existing regulations from the 1970 and 1977 amendments, are listed below, along with a general statement of what they cover:

• Title I:

• National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), Clean Air Act sections 105–110 and 160– 193; 40 CFR Parts 50–53, 55, 58, 65, 81, and 93. Establishes concentration-based ambient air standards.

• New Source Performance Standards (NSPSs), Clean Air Act section 111; 40 CFR Part 60. Establishes emission limitations for speciﬁc categories of new or modiﬁed sources.

• Title II:

Mobile Sources Program, Clean Air Act sections 202–250; 40 CFR Parts 80 and 85–88. Covers

tailpipe emission standards for aircraft, autos, and trucks, including fuel and fuel additives, clean

fuel vehicles, and Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPS) research for mobile sources.

• Title III:

National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPS), Clean Air Act section

112; 40 CFR Parts 61, 63, and 68. Includes an accidental release program, list of HAPS and

sources, residual risk standards, and maximum achievable control technology (MACT) stan-

dards.

• Title IV:

Acid Rain Program, Clean Air Act sections 401–416; 40 CFR Parts 72–78. Acid deposition

control via sulfur and nitrogen oxide controls on coal- and oil-burning electric utility boilers.

• Title V:

Operating permit program, Clean Air Act sections 501–507; 40 CFR Parts 70–71. Requires

operating permits on all sources covered under the Clean Air Act.

• Title VI:

Stratospheric Ozone Protection Program, Clean Air Act sections 601–618; 40 CFR Part 82.

Contains a list of ozone-depleting substances. Bans certain freons, requires freon recycling.

• Title VII:

Enforcement Provisions, Clean Air Act sections 113, 114, 303, 304, 306, and 307. Compliance

certiﬁcation, enhanced monitoring, record keeping and reporting, $25,000 / day ﬁnes, civil and

criminal penalties, entry / inspector provisions, citizen lawsuits and awards up to $10,000, and

public access to records.

Worker Right to Know

The Hazard Communication Standard of the Occupational Safety and Health Act requires that all employees be informed of the hazards associated with the chemicals they are exposed to or could be accidentally exposed to. In addition to chemical hazards, OSHA requires workers be trained to recognize many other types of hazards. Hazards may include chemical, explosion and ﬁre, oxygen deﬁciency (conﬁned spaces, for example), ionizing radiation, biological hazards, safety hazards, elec- trical hazards, heat stress, cold exposure, and noise. Compliance with Worker Right to Know laws general requires a written plan that explains how the Hazard Communication Standard will be exe- cuted. The only operations where a written Hazard Communication Plan is not required are handling facilities where workers contact only sealed chemical containers and laboratories. These facilities must still provide hazard training to employees, retain the original labeling on the shipping containers, and make material safety data sheets (MSDSs) available to all employees. In general, no employees should be working with any chemical or equipment that they are not familiar with. OSHA statistics indicate that failure to comply with the Hazard Communication Standard is its most cited area (OSHA 1999b).

The Hazard Communication Standard requires each facility to conduct a hazard assessment for each chemical in the workplace, maintain an inventory of chemicals in the workplace, retain MSDSs for each chemical in the workplace, properly label each chemical according to a uniform labeling policy, train each employee to understand the MSDSs, product labels, and Hazard Communication Standard, and develop a written program that explains how the Hazard Communication Standard is to be implemented at the facility.

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976, an amendment to the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, and the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984, which expanded RCRA, were enacted to protect human health and environment, reduce waste and energy, and reduce or eliminate hazardous waste as rapidly as possible. Three programs addressing hazardous waste, solid waste, and underground storage tanks are included in RCRA.

Subtitle C requires the tracking of hazardous waste from ‘‘cradle to grave,’’ which refers to the requirement that hazardous waste be documented by a paper trail from the generator to ﬁnal disposal, whether it be incineration, treatment, landﬁll, or some combination of processes. Subtitle D estab- lishes criteria for state solid waste management plans. Funding and technical assistance are also provided for adding recycling and source reduction implementation and research. Subtitle I presents rules for the control and reduction of pollution from underground storage tanks (USTs).

A RCRA hazardous waste is any substance that meets physical characteristics such as ignitibility, corrosivity, and reactivity or may be one of 500 speciﬁc hazardous wastes. They may be in any physical form: liquid, semisolid, or solid. Generators and transporters of hazardous waste must have federally assigned identiﬁcation numbers and abide by the regulations pertinent to their wastes. In- dividuals treating and disposing of hazardous wastes must meet stringent operating guidelines and be permitted for treatment and disposal technologies employed. RCRA hazardous waste regulations apply to any commercial, federal, state, or local entity that creates, handles, or transports hazardous waste.

A RCRA solid waste is any sludge, garbage, or waste product from a water treatment plant, wastewater treatment plant, or air pollution control facility. It also includes any discarded material from industrial, mining, commercial, agricultural, and community activities in contained gaseous, liquid, sludge, or solid form. RCRA solid waste regulations pertain to owners and operators of municipal solid waste landﬁlls (EPA OSW 1999a,b).

Hazardous Materials Transportation Act

The Hazardous Materials Transportation Act of 1975 (HMTA) and the 1990 Hazardous Materials Uniform Safety Act were promulgated to protect the public from risks associated with the movement of potentially dangerous materials on roads, in the air, and on waterways. They do not pertain to the movement of materials within a facility. Anyone who transports or causes to be transported a haz- ardous material is subject to these regulations, as is anyone associated with the production or mod- iﬁcation of containers for hazardous materials. Enforcement of the HMTA is delegated to the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Railway Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, and Re- search and Special Programs Administration (for enforcement of packaging rules).

The regulations of the HMTA are divided into four general areas: procedures and policies, labeling and hazard communication, packaging requirements, and operational rules. Proper labeling and hazard communication requires the use of the standard hazard codes, labeling, shipping papers, and plac- arding. Hazardous materials must be packaged in containers compatible with the material being shipped and be of sufﬁcient strength to prevent leaks and spills during normal transport (DOE OEPA 1996).

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA)

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) was en- acted in 1980 to provided a federal Superfund for the cleanup of abandoned hazardous waste sites. Funding for the Superfund was provided through ﬁnes levied or lawsuits won against potentially responsible parties (PRPs). PRPs are those individuals having operated at or been afﬁliated with the hazardous waste site. Afﬁliation is not limited to having physically been on the site operating a process intrinsic to the hazardous waste creation. Afﬁliation can include those parties that have provided transportation to the site or customers of the operation at the hazardous waste site that transferred raw materials to the site for processing (EPA OPA 1999a).

The Superfund Amendment Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986 continued cleanup authority under CERCLA and added enforcement authority to CERCLA (EPA OPA 1999b). Within SARA was the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) also know as SARA Title III. EPCRA established the framework for communities to be prepared for chemical emergencies that could occur at industrial sites in their neighborhoods. EPCRA required states to form State Emergency Response Commissions (SERCs). SERCs divided the states into Emergency Planning Districts and formed Local Emergency Planning Committees. These committees consist of a broad range of community leaders, emergency ofﬁcials, and health professionals (EPA OPA 1999c). SERCs use information acquired through Section 313 of SARA, the Toxic Releases Inventory (TRI), to make emergency planning decisions. Chemical producers and consumers must annually report releases of chemicals during the year to the EPA. These releases may occur continuously throughout the year or in a single large burst and include releases that a company is legally permitted to make, such as through air permits. Included in these reports are the type and volume of chemical released, the media the chemical was released to, how much of the chemical was transported from the site for recycling or disposal, how the chemical was treated for disposal, the efﬁciency of treatment, and pollution prevention and recycling activities at the reporting company. Reporting is required if a facility em- ploys 10 or more full-time employees and (EPA OPPT 1999):

Clean Water Act (CWA)

The 1972 Water Pollution Control Act, the 1977 Clean Water Act amendments, and the 1987 reau- thorization of the Clean Water Act provide the basis for regulation of discharges to receiving water bodies in the United States. Both point sources, discharges such as a pipe or channel, and nonpoint sources, such as runoff from ﬁelds or parking lots, are regulated by the Clean Water Act. Both direct dischargers and dischargers to a municipal treatment works must obtain National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits that govern the character of pollutants in waste streams and mandatory control technologies (EPA OW 1998).

The objectives of the CWA were to achieve ﬁshable and swimmable waters and to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into navigable waterways. To achieve these goals, industries were required to meet performance standards for pollutant emissions, states were charged with developing criteria for their waterways as well as programs to protect them, funding was provided for the construction of public wastewater treatment plants and other technologies to mitigate discharges, and development was regulated via a permit process to protect wetlands and minimize impacts on water resources.

In addition to the permit requirements of the 1977 amendments, the 1987 amendments permitted citizen suits that allowed any individual to bring a legal suit against any party believed to be in conﬂict with the provisions of the CWA. Citizen suits were also permitted against any party respon- sible for the enforcement and administration of the CWA that was believed derelict in its responsi- bilities. This expanded the responsibility of clean water enforcement to include the public as well as government bodies.

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