PSD Routine Maintenance, Repair, and Replacement Exclusion Controversy - What Projects are Routine?, 2002 Environmental Conference Proceedings

R. K. Taylor

The New Source Review (NSR) rule was originally promulgated to prevent significant degradation of ambient air quality resulting from new major and modified emission sources. The NSR rule is divided into two basic programs: the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) review requirements for areas designated as being in attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), and the Non-attainment Area (NA) review requirements for areas designated as non-attainment. The NSR program is considered to be the most complicated regulatory program administered under the Clean Air Act. During the last 22 years, the program has been implemented in an inconsistent manner at the state, regional, and federal levels. This is a result of the more than 4,000 pages of interpretive, and often conflicting, guidance memos and documents which have been written and re-written to "clarify" only 20 pages of regulatory text. Major sources that are affected by the NSR program, including those within the Forest Products industry, have struggled to understand and comply with the regulations and interpretations. Several times, decisions originally approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been overturned several years later based on new interpretive guidance that did not exist at the time the original compliance decision was made. This paper provides an overview of the latest PSD permitting issue that involves the interpretation of the routine maintenance, repair, and replacement exclusion of the PSD rule.