DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT AIR AND RADIATION MANAGEMENTADMINISTRATION RESPONSE TO COMMENTS for the PUBLIC HEARING held on February, 15, 2011 • in BALTIMORE, MD related to Opacity amendments. July 20, 2011

Purpose of Hearing: The purpose ofthis hearing is to allowfor public commenton the Department's proposal to: (1) amend Regulations .10and .11 underCOMAR 26.11.01 General Administrative Provisions; and (2) amend Regulations .01 and .05 underCOMAR 26.11.09 Control of Fuel-Burning Equipment, Stationary Internal Combustion Engines, and Certain FuelBurning Installations. Date and Location: The public hearing was held on February 15, 2011 at 10a.m., 1800 Washington Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21230. Hearing Officer: Deborah Rabin, Regulations Coordinator, Air and Radiation Management Administration, served as Hearing Officer. Attendance:Timothy Henderson, Rich and Henderson, P.C. attended the public hearing and comments were also received via email from Steve Mclain, Panda Brandywine, LP. Statement: The Department's statement was submitted intothe record by Mrs. Diane Franks, Program Manager, Air Quality Planning Program ofthe Airand Radiation Management Administration. Comments and Responses: The comments received atthe hearing and the written comments that the Department received during the 30-day comment period that relate tothe proposed action have been summarized and the Department's responses aregiven below.

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### COMMENT: Acommenter requests that the Department provideflexibility into itsopacity regulations to allow facilities operating continuous emissions monitors (CEMs) to not be subject to the regulations requiring the use ofcontinuous opacity monitors (COMs) for measuring compliance with opacitystandards. The commenter cited the provisions ofthe Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) from the Portland Cement Manufacturing Industry and Standards of Performance for Portland Cement Plants, 75 Federal Register 549970 (Sept. 9, 2010), as amended by76 Federal Register 2832 (January 18, 2011) as support ofthe above request. 

### RESPONSE: While the New Portland Cement NESHAP does provide allowances for removing the requirements for affected sources to operate COMs for any source operating particulate matter (PM) CEMs and furtherto not be subject to opacity standards, it is importantto notethat the NESHAP is a rule for hazardous air pollutantswhereas MOE's opacity regulations are developed as a surrogate for the criteria pollutant particulate matter (PM). As such, the Department has concerns that PM CEMs do not accurately monitor fine particles and may not effectively serve as a replacement for COMs
. Furthermore, Maryland's State Implementation Plan (SIP) is not as flexible as EPA's NESHAP and does not allow forthe replacement ofCOMs with CEMs
. With that being stated, the Department will further review this matterto determinewhether EPA will certifythat CEMs can replace COMs as a method to determine compliance with opacity standards. Should this be the case, the Department may need to develop a 110ldemonstration to EPA in orderto provide this exception. 

### COMMENT: Acommenter notesthat in the proposed amendment to COMAR 26.11.01.11 a requirement under E{2)(a) forthe 6-minute averaging ofdata conflicts with data reduction requirements in Section D(2) which requires a CEM to record not less than four equally spaced data points. 

### RESPONSE: The Department recognizes that COMAR 26.11 .01.11E(2)(a) conflicts with COMAR 26.11.01 .11D(2). COMAR 26.11.01.11E(2)(a) was added erroneously and will be removed in the Final Action as a nonsubstantive change.

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