EPA sends out detailed information requests and reviews Title V-compliance disclosures to identify potential violations. A source can be required to address every physical change or change in the method of operation and emissions increase since the promulgation of NSR rules. With the expanded rules for ozone precursors, EPA is particularly aggressive regarding NOX-emissions sources. EPA's basis for NSR applicability often is a comparison of actual emissions for the two-year period before a change and the potential emissions after the change, and a presumption that all nonroutine changes may result in an increase in utilization and the resulting increase in emissions. In a competitive and technologically evolving industry, process changes are a necessity to maintain product quality and production costs and to remain in business.
Many facilities are at risk for selective enforcement based on past permitting decisions.
Because of EPA's complex NSR regulations, inconsistent interpretation, and often-unreasonable requirements, the regulated community and many state permitting agencies for years have called for regulatory reform. EPA finally proposed an NSR-reform rule in June 1996. A proposed change that could provide a significant benefit to industry regards NSR applicability and prepermit emissions. Utilities recently were allowed a baseline of any two years out of the most recent five years. Permitting agencies sometimes have used this basis to unreasonably impose production limits on facilities trying to avoid NSR by reducing their allowed capacity to below the facility's normal maximum production levels.