EPA Delays Compliance Deadlines for Revised Limits for Emissions of Hazardous Air Pollutants from Iron & Steel Making Facilities Like Edgar Thomson Works

Last year, we blogged about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) revisions to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Integrated Iron and Steel making facilities.

Those revisions imposed new emission standards and limits, mostly on the facilities’ previously unregulated fugitive emissions of hazardous air pollutants.  One facility in our region - U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works - is subject to these regulations.

On July 3, EPA published an interim final rule that delays compliance deadlines for those revised emission standards and limits.  Specifically, EPA is pushing compliance deadlines which would have fallen on either April 3, 2025, or April 3, 2026, back to April 3, 2027, for these new standards and limits:

• Work practice standards designed to reduce emissions of particulate matter (PM) from unplanned bleeder valve openings

• The opacity limit on emissions from unplanned bleeder valve openings

• Work practice standards designed to reduce emission from blast furnace bell leaks

• The opacity limit on emissions from slag processing and handling; and

• A requirement to install and operate fenceline monitors to track chromium levels in the ambient air.

Generally speaking, EPA is pushing back the compliance deadlines for the first four standards above based on new information (provided by industry) that purports to show that compliance by the original deadlines in 2025 and 2026 was not feasible.  

In contrast, EPA is delaying the compliance deadline for the fenceline monitoring requirement “[f]or consistency,” not because of infeasibility.

“According to EPA, the delay will save the nine facilities between $3.3 and $3.5 million,” said GASP’s Senior Attorney John Baillie, “However, the delay will also result in emissions of 120 tons of hazardous air pollutants that would have been avoided had the original deadlines been enforced. This seems like the wrong trade-off for EPA to make.”

EPA is accepting comments on the revised compliance dates only through Aug. 1.

You can submit comments at https://www.regulations.gov. Submit your comments under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2002-0083, and reference that docket number in your comments themselves.