EPA OKs Cemex tire burning
By Lauren Heaton
Reversing a decision it made in November, the Ohio Environmental Protection
Agency ruled this month that the Cemex Fairborn cement plant has one
year to complete a trial burn using scrap tires as a partial fuel.
After learning new information about the status of previous inspection
violations Cemex committed several years ago and the need for scrap
tire disposal, Ohio EPA Director Chris Korleski approved Cemex’s
request to complete two 60-day combustion trials using a mixture of
petroleum coke, coal and whole tires. Cemex has one year to complete
the test and must notify the Regional Air Pollution Control Agency at
the beginning and completion of each trial burn, according to the EPA’s
guidelines.
The OEPA’s recent decision in effect reverses last year’s
denial of Cemex’s proposal to test burn tires. In November 2007,
Korleski ruled that due to Cemex’s failure to address the alleged
air emissions and kiln door installation violations found by the U.S.
EPA in March 2005, approving an exemption of the Title V permit and
allowing the tire burn trial would be “inappropriate,” he
wrote in a denial letter to Cemex. But on May 15, Korleski changed his
decision and approved Cemex’s request to burn tires after learning
the trial would not affect the U.S. EPA’s allegations from 2005.
“I have learned more about the U.S. EPA enforcement case and found
that allowing CEMEX to do feasibility studies on the burning of tires
in the kiln will not affect that case,” Korleski wrote in a public
announcement two weeks ago.
In addition, Korleski wrote in a letter to Cemex that the reversal was
also influenced by his recent discovery that Cemex’s difficulty
in receiving corporate funding prevented the company from completing
the tire test burn during its 2006-07 permit exemption. Lastly, Korleski
wrote in a letter to the public that “my own recent experience
with tire dumping enforcement cases has led me to further consider the
potential benefits of using tires as a fuel source.”
According to OEPA spokesperson Jenny Marsee from the Regional Air Pollution
Control Agency, Korleski’s statement meant that as director of
the OEPA, he “has to consider balancing the air effects of tire
burning with trying to find a disposal site for tires.”
Allowing the cement plant to burn tires would serve the interests of
the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which awarded a one-time $350,000
grant to Cemex last year to help rid Ohio of over one million discarded
tires. According to the OEPA, Ohio collects over 3 million scrap tires
each year in landfills and unauthorized dumps.
But Dawn Falleur, who is director of the Green Environmental Coalition,
believes that burning a hazardous waste in a way that creates more hazardous
waste doesn’t help anyone.
“Garbage in, garbage out,” she said, indicating that the
only proper way to dispose of tires is to burn them in an incinerator
made for that purpose, an expensive process that cuts down on business
profits.
“We are very disappointed that the director of the OEPA would
take this position after assuring us when he took that office last year
that he would insist on compliance,” Falleur said Tuesday.
The OEPA’s most recent ruling also represents a loss of leverage
for the four other regions in the U.S. with Cemex plants that have a
history of compliance failure, she said.
“If Ohio had denied the request because Cemex had not satisfied
the violations, it would have been leverage for the other cases across
the country,” she said.
According to OEPA standards, Cemex’s test burn will involve a
fuel combination of not less than 70 percent petroleum coke and not
more than 30 percent tires, which represents burning a maximum of 8,600
passenger tire equivalents per day, or 3 million tires a year. Cemex
is not permitted to burn tires for more than two 60-day periods, and
the company will also be required to perform continuous emissions monitoring
for total hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrous
oxides.
These test protocols still are not strict enough for Falleur, who would
like to see an analysis of the compounds that make up each tire so that
monitors can know what will be burned and what emissions to test for
in the air. And though the continuous emissions monitoring is required
during the test for 30 days after, Falleur thinks Cemex should be measuring
air quality all the time, period.
Though Cemex had a permit exemption to test-burn tires for 2006, the
company was not able to complete the trials in time and was granted
an extension by the OEPA until December 2007. The Green Environmental
Coalition filed an appeal of that extension with the Ohio Environmental
Review Appeals Commission in January 2007, which is still active, according
to Falleur.
“We have to do what we feel is right, and opposing this is the
right thing to do,” she said.
Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com