UPDATED: Huber wants to increase emissions

Those emissions would exceed the limits of Huber’s current permit.

If the EPD grants Huber’s request, Huber would be allowed to emit 730 tons per year of nitrogen oxide, compared to 233 currently allowed.
“That’s the real big increase,” Cornwall noted.

The permit would also allow Huber to emit 40 percent more carbon monoxide (from 237 tons/year now to 333) and would let it emit 87 percent more volatile organic compounds (from 242 tons/year to 453), but would result in a 23 percent reduction in its emissions of particulate matter (from 221 tons/year to 170).

Under law, the permit change, if granted, would also require Huber to use the best available control technology, Cornwall said.

EPD received the application July 1. It is now undergoing management review, according to Cornwall. If there are no “showstoppers” in the application, Cornwall said the matter will be open for public review in November or December.

“They will have to do air quality modeling to make sure the new rates won’t cause a detriment to air quality in the area,” he said. “There are two things we have to examine, the emission unit-specific standards that may apply — does the boiler comply with EPA emission standards. Also, the big picture, the national ambient air quality standards. If so many more pounds are coming out, what is the concentration of pollutants on their neighbors and does it exceed EPA regulations?”

Cornwall said the EPD has had requests for public meetings. Those will probably be held in late December or January and will be advertised in The Jackson Herald, the county’s legal organ.

“The purpose of the permit is to increase our operational flexibility by allowing us to use any combination of currently approved resins which are used in the production process,” said Robert Currie, vice president and chief communications and public affairs officer for Huber, via email from Huber’s Edison, NJ, corporate office. “This flexibility will help us to remain competitive in specialty engineered wood products. The plant desires this change to take effect during the first quarter of 2010 for the permit.”

This update corrects (thanks to an alert reader) the references in paragraphs one and four regarding the release of nitrogen oxides (not nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas).