BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF THE NEW
POLLUTION PREVENTION ACT AND REGULATIONS
COVERED FACILITIES
Facilities that are required to submit
to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) a Toxics Release
Inventory (TRI) Reporting Form R under Section 313 of the federal Emergency and
Community Right to Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA) are covered under the New Jersey
Pollution Prevention Act (N.J.S.A. 13:1D-35), and must follow its
implementation schedule. Each covered facility must conduct pollution prevention
planning for all TRI toxic substances that it manufactures,
processes or otherwise uses in excess of 10,000 pounds per year. The first step
in the process is to submit to the New Jersey Department of Environmental
Protection (NJDEP) a Release and Pollution Prevention Report (RPPR or DEQ-114)
under the New Jersey Worker and Community Right to Know requirements (N.J.A.C.
7:1g-4.1(a)) by July 1 of the same year the TRI reporting is due. By July 1 of
the following year, a facility must complete a Pollution Prevention plan and
Pollution Prevention Plan Summary.
REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS
Each covered facility must prepare
three documents: (1) a five year Pollution Prevention Plan; (2) a five year
Pollution Prevention Plan Summary; and (3) an annual Pollution Prevention Plan
Progress Report as part of the New Jersey Release and Pollution Prevention
Report. The Summary and Progress Report must be submitted to the NJDEP. The
Plan is kept on-site at the facility.
Covered facilities in the following
five Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes should have prepared a Plan
and submitted a Plan Summary by July 1, 1999: 26 (paper products), 28 (chemical
and allied products), 30 (rubber and miscellaneous plastics), 33 (primary
metals), and 34 (fabricated metals). The first Progress Report was due on July
1, 2000. The next five-year Pollution Prevention Plan must be prepared and the
Plan Summary submitted by July 1, 2004.
Covered facilities having manufacturing
SIC codes 20 - 39 other than the five listed above should have prepared their
Plan and submitted their Plan Summary by July 1, 2001. The first Progress
Report for this group of facilities is due on July 1, 2005. The next five-year
Pollution Prevention Plan must be prepared and the Plan Summary submitted by July
1, 2006.
Under federal TRI rules (40 CFR Part
372, May 1, 1997), facilities in the following additional SIC codes are subject
to the TRI reporting requirements, and thus to the New Jersey Pollution
Prevention Planning Rules:
1. SIC codes10 (metal mining) and 12
(coal mining), except for facilities in the following industry codes: 1011
(iron ore mining), 1081 (metal mining services), 1094 (uranium-radium-vanadium
ore mining), and 1241 (coal mining services). Any facility having SIC codes 10
or 12 must refer to 40 CFR 372.28 for applicable exemptions.
2. SIC codes for electric utilities,
4911, 4931 or 4939 (each limited to facilities that combust coal and/or oil for
the purpose of generating power for distribution in commerce). These codes
refer specifically to electric services (4911), electric and other services
combined (4931) and combination utilities, not otherwise classified (4939).
3. SIC code for commercial hazardous
waste treatment, 4953 (limited to facilities regulated under the hazardous
waste management standards of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,
Subtitle C, 42 U.S.C. section 6921 et seq.).
4. SIC codes 5169 (chemical and allied
products- wholesale), 5171 (petroleum bulk terminals and plants (also known as
stations) - wholesale) and 7389 (solvent recovery services -limited to
facilities primarily engaged in solvent recovery services on a contract or fee
basis).
Any facility having these codes must
refer to 40 CFR 372.22 (b) for applicable criteria. Covered facilities having
these codes must prepare their Pollution Prevention Plan with 1999 as base year
and submit their Plan Summary by July 1, 2000. The first Progress Report for
these groups of facilities was due July 1, 2001.
POLLUTION PREVENTION
The Act essentially creates two categories
of material that may come out of an industrial process. The material is either
product output (which includes products, intermediate products or co-products)
or it is "nonproduct output.
" Nonproduct outputs are all hazardous
substances that are generated by a production process prior to treatment,
control, out-of-process recycling, disposal, or storage.
The regulations define pollution
prevention to be: "changes in production process operations, raw materials
or products that result in a reduction in the use of hazardous or in the
generation of hazardous substances as nonproduct
output". The regulations identify five general methods of pollution
prevention: (1) substituting hazardous substances with non
or less hazardous substances; (2) reformulating products; (3) maintaining good
housekeeping practices; (4) redesigning production processes; and (5) recycling
hazardous substances within processes. The regulations specify that the
following practices are not pollution prevention: incineration,
treatment, pollution control, out-of-process recycling, and any measure that
transfers risks among the environment, workers or consumers.
There are two primary measures of
pollution prevention that are quantified and tracked in the Pollution
Prevention Planning process: hazardous substance USE/UNIT OF PRODUCT and
generation of NONPRODUCT OUTPUT/UNIT OF PRODUCT. Hazardous substance use
per unit of product is a measure of production process "efficiency":
how much raw material was used to produce a unit of product? Nonproduct output per unit of product is a measure of
production process "inefficiency": how much waste was generated to
produce a unit of product?
POLLUTION PREVENTION PLANS
A Pollution Prevention Plan is a
detailed document prepared by a facility in whatever format is most useful to
it. The Plan is not a DEP document, but rather it belongs to the facility and
remains on site. A complete revision of the Plan is done every five years. The
Pollution Prevention Program Requirements (N.J.A.C. 7:1K-1 et seq.) list all of
the specific requirements for a Plan but there is no required form or format that facilities must follow. A Pollution Prevention Plan is
intended to be a tool for a facility to use in identifying operations that
would benefit from pollution prevention and to identify specific pollution
prevention methods that the facility intends to implement. A Pollution
Prevention Plan has two parts:
Part I: is an inventory of the use and
generation of hazardous substances at the facility. It identifies each production
process and determines the quantities of hazardous substances that each process
uses, generates, or releases and is conducted using best engineering estimates.
Part I inventory data is required to be included on Form P2-115, available
from the Department.
Part II: involves identifying specific
pollution prevention methods that the facility may consider. It also involves
the facility analyzing which methods it intends to adopt and, based on that
analysis, the facility sets personalized five year pollution prevention goals.
COVERED FACILITIES ARE REQUIRED TO
CONDUCT POLLUTION PREVENTION PLANNING, BUT IMPLEMENTATION OF THEIR PLANS IS
VOLUNTARY.
POLLUTION PREVENTION PLAN SUMMARY
A Plan Summary is a condensation of the
full Pollution Prevention Plan. Like the full Plan, it is done every five
years. The Plan Summary must be prepared on a DEP supplied form and must be
submitted to the DEP. The Plan Summaries are publicly available and all
information is entered into a publicly available database.
POLLUTION PREVENTION PLAN PROGRESS
REPORT
A Progress Report is a brief summary of
the facility's progress toward its five-year pollution prevention goals. The
Progress Report has been incorporated into the New Jersey Release and Pollution
Prevention Report (RPPR or DEQ-114) as Sections C and D and must be submitted
annually. It includes calculations to document the facility's increase or
decrease in hazardous substance use and generation of nonproduct
output. These calculations are done on a per unit of
product basis, so that production differences from year to year do not mask
increases or decreases in production process efficiency.
SEQUENCE OF POLLUTION PREVENTION
PLANNING
The DEP recommends that facilities
follow a 12-step approach to developing their Pollution Prevention Plans. This
planning approach is addressed in detail in a guidance document prepared by the
DEP titled Industrial Guide to Pollution Prevention Planning. Also
available is a Sample P2 Plan, both of which are available at www.state.nj.us/dep/opppc. Note that steps 4 through 12 are covered in
the Pollution Prevention Program Rules:
Step 1 - Focus on pollution prevention.
Step 2 -
Establish a corporate policy prioritizing pollution prevention over other
conventional environmental management techniques.
Step 3 -
Provide senior leadership.
Step 4 -
Identify all production processes that use or generate hazardous substances on
the covered list.
Step 5 -
Group similar processes - grouping allows a facility to group together similar
processes and treat the grouped processes as one process. This is intended to
help the facility by reducing the time and resources spent on planning. The
regulations provide facilities with maximum flexibility in terms of deciding how
to group. The one regulatory restriction is that facilities may not group
treatment systems with production processes.
Step 6 -
Conduct Part I of a Plan.
Step 7 -
Target priority processes on which to conduct Part II of a Pollution Prevention
Plan. The regulations require facilities to target as many production processes
that contribute to 90% of the total quantity of use, generation or release of
hazardous substances.
Step 8 -
Conduct Part II of a Pollution Prevention Plan on targeted processes.
Step 9 -
Developed personalized five-year pollution prevention goals.
Step 10 -
Develop and submit Plan Summary.
Step 11 -
Develop and submit annual Plan Progress Reports.
Step 12 -
Revise the Plan and Plan Summary every five years.
CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION
Both the Act and the regulations
include detailed provisions for claiming and protecting confidential business
information (also called trade secret information.) In short, the regulations
stipulate that a Pollution Prevention Plan that is kept on-site at the
industrial facility will be treated as confidential by the facility and DEP. If
the facility believes that its Plan Summary or Progress Report contains
confidential information, a confidentiality claim may be filed.
DEP has the authority to make a determination
as to whether the information, which a facility asserts is confidential, is
legitimately confidential. Under the Pollution Prevention Rules, confidential
and assertedly confidential information is treated
with special care to protect against disclosure.
DEP'S AUTHORITIES AND
RESPONSIBILITIES
The Act provides the Department with
the authority to enter a facility and review a Pollution Prevention Plan
on-site at the facility.
The pollution prevention program is
different from traditional command and control regulatory programs. Companies
are required to prepare their Plans but are not required to implement the goals
established in them. Any covered facility which fails to prepare a Plan and
submit a Plan Summary and annual Progress Reports to the DEP is considered to
be out of compliance and goes on the public record as such.
Pollution prevention planning itself
provides an incentive for firms to implement pollution prevention techniques.
If a facility has completed a Plan, the Department expects that it will find
opportunities for prevention that reduce the effects of industrial activities
on the environment and improve business for the company using them. Several
studies have confirmed that pollution prevention opportunities in most
industrial sectors are plentiful and that the companies who completed pollution
prevention plans are reporting significant savings in operating and
disposal/treatment costs. If you would like copies of these reports, see www.state.nj.us/dep/opppc or call the Office of Pollution Prevention and
Permit Coordination at (609) 777-0518.
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
1. Some people believe that all
facilities must set a 50% pollution prevention goal. THIS IS FALSE. The Act
establishes a statewide public policy goal of reducing the generation of
hazardous substances prior to storage, treatment, and out-of-process recycling
by 50% over five years. However, individual facilities may set completely
different goals, more or less than 50%. The 50% statewide goal does not bind
individual facilities.
2. Some people believe that the Act
authorizes the government to direct industry to only use certain chemicals in
certain quantities. THIS IS FALSE. The Act does not, in any way, require
mandatory reductions of hazardous substances in overall facility use levels.
Rather, the Act focuses on identifying ways of improving efficiencies in
use and NPO generation per unit of product.
3. Some people believe that the New
Jersey Pollution Prevention Act is a completely voluntary program. THIS IS
FALSE. Covered facilities must prepare Pollution Prevention Plans, Plan
Summaries, and annual Progress Reports. Failure to do so may result in
penalties being assessed. Although facilities must prepare these documents,
facilities are not required to implement their Plans. Therefore, the
requirement to do pollution prevention planning is mandatory; implementing the
Plan is voluntary.
4. Some people believe that they
must do a Pollution Prevention Plan for every hazardous substance they
manufacture, process, or otherwise use at their facilities. THIS IS FALSE.
Facilities are required to incorporate in their Plan only those hazardous
substances manufactured, processed or otherwise used above 10,000 pounds per
year and which appear on the TRI list under the federal Emergency
Planning and Community Right to Know Act. NOTE: If all of a facility's
TRI hazardous substances generate less than 500 pounds of production-related
waste (nonproduct output), the facility may qualify
for an alternate threshold and reduced reporting (see 40 CFR 372.27, 59 FR
61501 dated November 30, 19971994). Substances which are not on the TRI list
need not be incorporated into Pollution Prevention Plans, regardless of amounts
on-site.
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
Technical assistance for identifying
potential pollution prevention options is available to small and medium-sized
businesses. Call DEP's Office of Pollution Prevention
and Permit Coordination at (609) 777-0518 for information regarding technical
assistance.
REGULATORY ASSISTANCE
For assistance in complying with the
New Jersey Pollution Prevention Act, contact the DEP's
Office of Pollution Prevention and Permit Coordination at (609) 777-0518. Staff are able to answer any questions related to pollution
prevention planning, reporting, and other compliance matters. Facilities may
also request an on-site visit from a technical staffer to assist with
assembling the Plan.