Opinion ID: 580022
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Spokane's Permit Application

Text: 11 Pursuant to 40 C.F.R. §§ 52.21(u), 52.2497(b), EPA has delegated administration of the PSD program in Washington to Ecology. On August 26, 1987, Spokane filed its PSD permit application with Ecology. Spokane proposed an incinerator designed to burn 800 tons of solid waste per day. The proposal included no provision for removal of recyclable materials from the waste stream except for refrigerators and hazardous materials. The incinerator design instead included combustion and in the stack technologies 3 to reduce regulated air pollutants. Even with these technologies installed, Spokane's proposed incinerator will emit hundreds of tons of regulated pollutants into the air each year. 12 During the comment period on Spokane's application, Citizens challenged the proposed PSD permit because the proposal failed to include recycling as a best available control technology to reduce air pollution. Citizens noted that recycling would reduce the volume of the waste stream and thereby necessarily reduce air pollution generated by burning waste. Citizens further commented that recycling qualified as the best available control technology when taking into account, as the Act requires, energy, environmental, and economic impacts and other costs. 42 U.S.C. § 7479(3). Citizens argued that recycling would minimize 13 costs uniquely associated with mass burn incineration including revenue lost from recyclable materials; energy costs associated with manufacturing from virgin, as opposed to recycled[,] materials; environmental and other costs due to the mining of raw materials when recycled materials could be used instead; costs associated with disposal and handling of hazardous incinerator ash; soil, water, and plant contamination caused both by air pollution and by leachate from ash disposal sites; and cumulative effects such as acid rain and ozone depletion. 14 In support of its comments, Citizens filed three studies of recycling. 15 Ecology responded to Citizens' comments by rejecting consideration of recycling as a best available control technology for the Spokane incinerator. On December 13, 1988, Ecology issued final approval of the Spokane incinerator permit.