Also serving the communities of De Luz, Rainbow, Camp Pendleton, Pala and Pauma

Small farms to be exempt from emissions permit rule

The San Diego Air Pollution Control District has exempted agricultural sources which cause insignificant air pollution from permit requirements for equipment and processes.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors, which also acts as the board of the San Diego Air Pollution Control District, voted 5-0 April 25 to adopt findings to exempt agricultural sources from the permit requirements. The APCD’s action also included clarifying several existing exemptions and removing an exemption for identical replacement of stationary and portable diesel engines subject to the state’s air toxic control measures.

“Basically what we were doing was making our rule consistent with state law,” said assistant air pollution control officer Rosa Maria Abreu.

Air Pollution Control District Rule 10 requires all persons to obtain a written Permit to Operate before engaging in any activity which may emit air contaminants, but Rule 11 provides a list of equipment, operations, and processes which are not subject to Rule 10 because they have negligible emissions or are pre-empted from permit requirements by state or Federal law. Rule 11 was last amended in November 2000.

In 2003 the state’s Health and Safety Code was amended to rescind a statewide permit exemption for equipment used in agricultural operations, although that legislation allowed local air pollution control boards to exempt any agricultural source where the total emissions from all units do not exceed 25 tons per year of each criteria pollutant or a specified amount of a hazardous air pollutant. No existing agricultural operations in San Diego County have emissions which exceed those thresholds.

State law also requires an air pollution control district to develop a rule requiring permits and emission controls for large confined animal facilities such as large dairies and chicken ranches. The California Air Resource Board definition of large confined animal facilities would equate to 2,000 dairy cows, and no such facilities exist in San Diego County. Thus the San Diego Air Pollution Control District’s findings included the absence of such facilities within the district, which exempts the district from developing such a rule.

Exemptions were also added for coating or adhesive application operations emitting no more than 150 pounds per year of volatile organic compounds, operations using materials such as greases and waxes not containing volatile organic solvents, robotically-operated enclosed abrasive blasting equipment, equipment used to control emissions during draining and degassing of bulk gasoline storage tanks, sterilizers or autoclaves using only steam or hydrogen peroxide, tub grinders and trommel screens processing wood waste, smokehouses for preparing food, equipment used for drilling fiberglass parts and vented through a bag filter inside a building (if the fiberglass dust collected is less than 500 pounds per year), fuel cell power or heat generating equipment which is certified under the California Air Resources Board’s Distributed Generation Program, auxiliary engines mounted on authorized emergency vehicles, smoke generating equipment used for training military personnel or for certifying persons to evaluate visible emissions for legal compliance, and waste or sludge treatment or water reclamation facilities with a specified throughput capacity.

For stationary or portable diesel engines which are required to have a permit, a full permit review rather than a simple permit update will now be required when those engines are replaced. The changes also delete exemptions for gas turbines operating on a waste-derived gaseous fuel and for portable equipment while in use for screening contaminated soils in soil remediation projects.

 

Reader Comments(0)