EPA contests amount of fine [EPA continues to harass small NC business owner

I don't believe that the EPA can accurately extrapolate how much waste they should have had by calculating the amount purchased and subtracting the amount lost in processing. As you said, the stuff just disappears. And any calculation involving the waste McNabb says he had on hand presumes that his records are correct and accurate! The Agency will have to try hard to construct a case based on what actually happened to waste that they can prove he actually generated.

This case will be precisely what McNabb has always said it was. A potential case of some paperwork errors. But the Agency is claiming significant environmental impact. There is no environmental impact if someone simply fouls up some peperwork.

I anticipate the EPA will ultimately apply the tried and true formula that they have found so successful in the past: Figure out how much of a fine it would take to get the man to go out of business and fine him one dollar less.

Truly, the EPA meets the classic definition of a corrupt enterprise under the RICO statutes.

By the way, how does one impose a fine one oneself, and to whom is said fine paid? I don't understand.

I think I can help clear up the "parts vs. machinery" question.

McNabb makes some parts that have to be exceptionally clean. He uses virgin Zep on those, and saves the used stuff.

Then he uses that to clean other parts which just have to be visually clean. He saves the residue from that as well.

He may (I have no knowledge of this one way or the other) use that stuff for general cleaning around the shop.

In other words, he is being environmentally responsible by getting the most use out of the minimum quantity of solvent.

If I understand what I heard correctly, there is no hazardous waste to be disposed of at the end of this process. It has all evaporated.

If what you are saying is correct, then the Agency will nail him for treating hazardous waste without a proper (and virtually unobtainable) TSDF (Treatment Storage and Disposal Facility) permit.

They will define "treatment" as rendering any waste from a higher level of hazard to a lower level of hazard in order to facilitate disposal.

They will concede that the facility is allowed the use of the material first in one, high performance application, and then, subsequently in several, increasingly lower performance applications. They will tacitly acknowledge that this is a good and proper implementation of a pollution prevention technology.

But, in fact, the EPA only recognizes pollution prevention at all because Congress has forced them to. They really hate pollution prevention because it screws up their Accounting Principles 101 approach to regulation. They love the command and control approach to regulations and pollution prevention starts messing around with that.

The Agency will first claim that, at some point the solvent becomes unusable, even for the least demanding of the cleaning applications. Then they will claim that this otherwise unusable residue, therefore, by definition, has become hazardous waste.

At that point, they will say, the company must treat the material as hazardous waste and begin the paperwork chain to account for it.

Futher, they will claim that, even though the residue may not have manifested a hazardous condition at the time of its disposal, it was hazardous at the point that it became unusable.

Then, they will administer the coup-de-grace, as they demonstrate that evaporation of the solvent was a hazardous waste treatment method employed by the company, and, ipso-facto, they were treating the hazardous waste so they could didpose of it, at a reduced ignitability hazard, as ordinary waste.

The EPA is a criminal enterprise!

I think you nailed it.

My friend, who makes his living in environmental compliance, thought that the EPA had absolutely no case on the waste dumping charge since there was no waste. He said they were setting him up on a "Title V" charge for the VOC evaporation, assuming that the quanitities were enough. Apparently, it doesn't matter how much solvent you actually used, only the "theoretical" amount that you "could" have used.

My friend rattled off all the applicable regulations, and frankly, my eyes glazed over. Example: It makes a difference whether you are wiping down a machine with a solvent for "maintenance" or "repair" or "some other use".

Cutting through all the BS, what we have here is a case of a bureaucracy making an example of what happens to a small business owner who doesn't show the proper respect. That's it, plain and simple.

First off, McNabb is supposed to keep records but it is possible that he didn't. Using POs, invoices, canceled checks, & bills of lading they can reconstruct a history. There is even a formula for calculating the mill oil.

If he is bringing in 1500 gals of solvent and processing fluids and sending out 300 gal of waste, there is a problem.

His self-imposed fine is two part:

1. He said he spent 250 thou on the lawsuit which was dismissed, appealed, and dismissed again.

2. Whereas most men in his situation would be doing everything possible to keep events out of the news, he did the opposite and the noteriety had a negative impact on his sales/profit.

The drum of spent solvent(solvent & oil) is hazardous waste. The solvent is hazardous and the oil is hazardous. They are to be disposed of properly. There is no difference between letting the solvent evaporate out of the waste drum and pouring it on the ground and letting it evaporate.

So he pays a processor $350 to haul off that drum of waste. The processor distills the solvent out and sells it to a cement kiln as fuel where it is burned at 2000 degrees, just as it would in a hazardous waste incinerator. It has been thermally oxidized.

Now the processor has the sludge left. He will try to find a home for that. He could possibly find a roof coating mfg and give it away to be incorporated into the coating. Whatever he has left has to be sent to the Hazardous Waste Landfill.

Title V would mean that he needed a "major source" permit, because he either emitted or had the "potential to emit" 10 tons per year of any HAP (hazardous air pollutant)(10 tons per year is a mojor source of HAPs). Hexane, like most of the rest of the HAPS on the HAP list, is a HAP because the CAAA of 1990 says it is, not because of any inherent danger to the environment (There is no inherent equivalency regarding the health hazard or hazard to the environment among HAPs).

Nonetheless, it is a HAP (Because the EPA gave Congress the list, and Congress unquestioningly put it into the CAAA of 1990, and President Bush signed the law. Now the EPA falls back on the "Congress created the HAP list, not us" fiction as they crucify industries under Title V and Title III).

Potential to emit (PTE) is calculated by the EPA, persuming an operating scenario of 24/7/365, at the worst possible operating secnario (in McNabb's case, he would thoretically be manufacturing the one part that caused him to use the greatest amount of the solvent conceivable in any one hour, times 24 times 7 times 365.

Now, if he had that PTE of 10 tons, but didn't ever or didn't conceive that he ever would, operate in a manner to achieve the 10 tons per year, then he had to petition the state to grant him a "Synthetic Minor" source permit. In this permit, he would presume legally enforcable limitations on his operation (hours of operation, throughput of materials, product mix, etc. Thue "synthetically" creating a legally enforceable set of restrictions to ensure he would never be a "major source" of HAPS) that would hold him below the 10 ton threshold.

But he would have had to have establish himself as a synthetic minor source prior to the deadline for Major Sources to have filed for their Title V permits. Because with a PTE of 10 tons he needed a Title V permit, unless he had already proven to the state (Fed EPA) that he really didn't need one in the first place.

Confused?

So were and are the states and so are all of the regulated sources.

And you have a bunch of people who have never made anything in their lives running around telling industries just what they are doing wrong, and giving then magically simple sounding solutions that have no practicality in the real world.

Just like the "He could possibly find a roof coating mfg and give it away to be incorporated into the coating." comment. What self respecting businessman could conceive of incorporating an raw material that has dubious origins, virtually unknowable constituent makeup and uncertain availability into their product.

It sounds like a utopianly simplistic solution but it lacks somewhat in realistic grounding in an ISO 9002 kind of world.

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