Last August we blogged about proposed revisions to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPs) for Integrated Iron and Steel Manufacturing Facilities, including U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock.
We are pleased to let you know that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it has finalized the revisions, which have been published in the Federal Register and take effect on June 3.
As a reminder, the new standards require that each integrated iron and steel manufacturing facility install four fence line monitors to detect fugitive emissions of chromium (which will serve as a proxy for all fugitive emissions of all metallic HAPs) and to take action to reduce such emissions if monitored levels exceed a yet-to-be-established threshold that will not exceed one microgram of chromium per cubic meter (1 µg/m3).
EPA estimates that once implemented, the measures required by the proposed revisions will reduce emissions of HAPs from the integrated iron and steel manufacturing sector by 79 tons per year, at a total sector-wide cost of $2.8 million.
Unfortunately, EPA did not break down expected emission reductions on a facility-by-facility basis.
“The final standards mirror the proposed revisions except in one notable respect: The final standards did not adopt proposed reduction in limits on the opacity of emissions from blast furnace cast houses and basic oxygen process furnaces that were included in the proposed revisions,” GASP senior attorney John Baillie said.