Modification to Air Permit to Construct

Rockwool submitted a modification to its current air permit

On October 3, 2022, Rockwool submitted an application to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to modify its Air Permit to Construct. In this application Rockwool is seeking to change the permitted operating parameters to match what it built. 

Background

Rockwool’s original Air Permit to Construct was poorly noticed and went unopposed by the public in 2017. When the true nature of the plant’s operation and the permit were discovered by the public in 2018 it was too late—the Air Permit to Construct had been approved.

In 2020, during ongoing construction, Rockwool informed the DEP it did not intend to operate the plant as permitted. Evaluation of the available documents (NPDES permits, VIP permits, Fire Marshall documents, and other municipal and state FOIA documents) made it seem clear that Rockwool’s original permit had been a sham. Rockwool never intended to use coal, but using inappropriate background monitors, Jefferson County’s few other air emission sources, and the guise of using coal as a fuel source it applied for very high levels of air pollution emissions to be permitted from its Ranson plant. Then by actually using natural gas instead of coal (which typically produces lower air emissions) Rockwool would not have to have as stringent of emission controls or be as carful as it would have had to if it had applied to use natural gas and not coal in its original air permit. In this way it seemed Rockwool had done an end-run around the permitting protections in the Clean Air Act for the air quality and health.

Jefferson County Foundation with the help of our specialized attorneys and experts has worked hard at the DEP and EPA to get them to require Rockwool to modify its original permit to reflect the plant it actually built and require the appropriate controls for that plant so that Jefferson County’s environment and residents are as protected as possible from the pollution the plant produces.

In 2022 Rockwool finally applied for this permit modification. Again, the notice was shortly before Thanksgiving, but the Foundation was watching. The Foundation submitted technical comments prepared by our specialized attorney and experts on this and then subsequent revisions by Rockwool. 

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has posted the draft air permit modification for Rockwool along with an engineering fact sheet.

Why is the Air Permit to Construct modification important? This is important because Rockwool’s Operational Air Permit (Title V Air Permit) will likely be at least for the most part based on this Air Permit to Construct.

Issues with the Proposed Modified Permit

The newest iteration of Rockwool’s air permit modification application (submitted to West Virginia DEP on May 22, 2023),  claims that the Ranson Facility has reduced air emissions to the point where it should no longer be considered a “Major Air Emission Source.” Instead, Rockwool claims the Ranson Facility should be considered a “Minor Air Emission Source” and that the Facility should no longer need to meet all the more stringent requirements of the “Major Air Emission Source” designation (best emission limits, monitoring, reporting, etc.). On its face, this sounds like an improvement. However, based on JCF’s initial review of the materials provided by the DEP to support the proposed permit change, there are several issues with this claim. First, it appears that Rockwool could not meet the emission limits for a “Minor Air Emission Source” without operational limitations including hours of operation limits, application rate limits, and material throughput limits at one or more emission sources. This means that if Rockwool could actually meet these limits, it would actually be a “Synthetic Minor Air Emission Source.” As a synthetic minor air emission source, Rockwool should have strict monitoring, recording, and reporting requirements in its air permit for these operational limitations, but the proposed permit is missing these. These are not the only potential issues with the proposed permit changes. Despite the pronouncements of Rockwool and the DEP, the permit still does not prohibit Rockwool from burning coal.  In addition, the information in the application and permit continue to be woefully inadequate to verify the claims made, and the DEP engineering report lacks an independent analysis of Rockwool’s claims to verify the proposed permit changes.

Read on for more information about these points. 

• The permit needs to specifically prohibit the use of coal at Rockwool.  
  Rockwool indicates in its application that it will not be burning coal as fuel, and the DEP’s Engineering Evaluation/Fact Sheet states that “the RAN facility will not fire coal” and “combustion of coal will not be permitted in the new permit.” However, the permit does not state explicitly that Rockwool is prohibited from using coal. The permit needs to expressly and strictly prohibit Rockwool from using coal either as a fuel source or as raw material. 

• Clearer permit limits for operational limits and monitoring of those limits need to be included. 
  Rockwool now claims that it is a minor air emission source (rather than a major air emission source) because of its reductions in air emissions. However, these emissions reductions are due in large part to limiting the operations of some sources. These are known as operational limitations and include hours of operation limits, application rate limits, and material throughput limits of one or more emission sources within the facility. These operational limits need to be explicitly stated in the permit and the associated tracking and reporting of Rockwool’s compliance with these limits need to be explicitly required in the permit. Without these, there is no accountability and the DEP cannot ensure that Rockwool is meeting these limits. 

• There is not enough information for us to confirm the claims made. 
  First, in order to verify the emission changes in the Rockwool permit application, for each operational or equipment change, the application and/or the DEP’s Engineering Evaluation should state what increase or decrease is expected to result from this change for each air emission (i.e. this change to XX is expected to lead to YY decrease in particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions). Second, there needs to be better factual support for the emission reductions that Rockwool claims result from the operational limitations on particular emission sources. There is a major lack of information in the application, and because of this lack of information, it is impossible to confirm the emission reductions that Rockwool is claiming. We need to know exactly what changes have led to how many reductions in which emissions and the basis for agreeing that this is the effect of the change so that we can properly evaluate what Rockwool is claiming. We did not have confidence in the emission values in the original application or the purported reductions to them in this permit modification application due to a lack of information.  The DEP and the public need to have this information to appropriately evaluate Rockwool application and the proposed modified permit. 
  • For example, one of the noted changes is the “modification of sizing of combustion sources” — the fact sheet should clearly state which units were changed and why.
    • Which specific combustion sources were changed?
    • Did Rockwool end up installing a smaller or larger unit than originally planned? 
    • Did stack testing show something different about their process or emission reduction efficiency than they planned?  

• Where is the engineering analysis? 
  The engineering report from DEP does not have any analysis of the data provided in Rockwool’s application. The DEP should do an independent engineering analysis of the information in the application – and other relevant operation it has collected in the last two years of operation of the Ranson Facility – and share it with the public. This analysis should show that the changes described in Rockwool’s application will actually lead to the emission reductions it is claiming at the Ranson Facility.

• There continues to be a general lack of transparency.  Certain information continues to be withheld as confidential business information (CBI) that the public should have access to according to the provisions of the Clean Air Act.