DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT 

AIR AND RADIATION MANAGEMENT ADMINISTRATION 

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 of this hearing is to allow for public comment on the 

Department's proposal to: (1) amend Regulations .10 and .11 under COMAR 26.11.01 General 

Administrative Provisions; and (2) amend Regulations .01 and .05 under COMAR 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 10 a.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 into the record by Mrs. Diane Franks, 

Program Manager, Air Quality Planning Program of the Air and Radiation Management 

Administration. 

Comments and Responses: The comments received at the hearing and the written comments 

that the Department received during the 30-day comment period that relate to the proposed 

action have been summarized and the Department's responses are given below. 

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COMMENT: A commenter requests that the Department provide flexibility into its opacity 

regulations to allow facilities operating continuous emissions monitors (CEMs) to not be subject 

to the regulations requiring the use of continuous opacity monitors (COMs) for measuring 

compliance with opacity standards. The commenter cited the provisions of the 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 by 76 Federal Register 

2832 (January 18, 2011) as support of the 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 further to not be subject to opacity standards, it is important to note that the 

NESHAP is a rule for hazardous air pollutants whereas 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 for the replacement of COMs with CEMs. 

With that being stated, the Department will further review this matter to determine whether 

EPA will certify that 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 110l demonstration 

to EPA in order to provide this exception. 

COMMENT: A commenter notes that in the proposed amendment to COMAR 26.11.01.11 a 

requirement under E{2)(a) for the 6-minute averaging of data 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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