Lehigh County Election Board Sued Over Clean Air Proposal

For those with ADD-- Skip to the 'IN SUMMARY' at the bottom

This concerns the experimental sludge incinerator currently being built in Allentown. WFMZ Reporter Randy Kraft reports, the county election board is being sued over disallowing a public referendum to appear on this November's ballot concerning their clean air proposal.

From what I gather the county's position is if this were to be passed by voters it would end up in court because they feel it supersedes the city's and county's authority over that of Pennsylvania's EPA statutes.

As I further understand this, the position of the group suing is whether this is legal or not, the election board's responsibility is solely to determine whether all the ballot requirements were met. The group feels they met all of Allentown's city ordinance requirements. The question remains did Lehigh County's election board exceeded it's authority when they ruled against it based on legal opinion as to whether it superseded state and/or the federal governments authority (which would take precedence) ?

That said, the ballot question the group proposed has three main components. (1) Require continuous monitoring. (2) Require that this continuous monitoring be streamed live to the public. (3) Limit emissions to the same as required of those who use natural gas.

In Regards To: (1) Require continuous monitoring
This is a given already. Both Pennsylvania & the federal EPA already require the continuous monitoring of municipal waste incinerators.§ 129.18. Municipal waste incinerators(a) The conditions of this section apply to municipal waste incinerators.

(b) The Department may require continuous monitoring for chemical species or process parameters which may include:...Another Pennsylvania statute states..§ 139.111. Waste incinerator monitoring requirements.
This section applies to monitoring systems installed on municipal and hospital waste incinerators.(1) Carbon monoxide, combustion efficiency and temperature monitoring systems shall meet the following minimum data availability requirements:

(i) One hundred percent of the data hours shall be valid hours as set forth in the quality assurance section of the manual referenced in § 139.102(3) (relating to references).

(ii) At least 90% of the data required to be collected each hour shall be valid data as set forth in the quality assurance section of the manual referenced in § 139.102(3).The United States EPA requires continuous monitoring also. 40 CFR Part 60
Standards of Performance for New Stationary Sources and Emission Guidelines for Existing Sources: Sewage Sludge Incineration Units; Final RuleE. What are the other requirements for new and existing SSI units?
Owners or operators of new or existing SSI units are required to submit a monitoring plan for any continuous monitoring system....

F. What are the recordkeeping and reporting requirements?
Records of the initial and all subsequent stack or PS tests, deviation reports, operating parameter data, continuous monitoring data, maintenance and inspections of the air pollution control devices.The United States EPA put out this brochure providing guidance for the continuous monitoring of Sludge incinerators.


In Regards To: (2) Require that this continuous monitoring be streamed live to the public.
Neither Pennsylvania nor United States EPAs require the public be provided LIVE streaming information. However they do require LIVE information to be made available to them. Under normal conditions operators need only file quarterly the information required. Although operators are required to monitor continuously, there are no requirements to provide the public with the data. From what I gather the public would have to file a RTK with the appropriate agency to obtain that data.

So (2) is an iffy. It may or may not hold up under current law.


In Regards To: (3) Limit emissions to the same as required of those who use natural gas.
The EPA has never regulated SSI units under section 129 of the CAA. However "The Clean Air Act (CAA) requires EPA to develop and adopt NSPS and EG for solid waste incineration units including SSI." The EPE also states "Units incinerating sewage sludge at other types of facilities (e.g. commercial, industrial, and institutional) will be covered under different air pollution incineration standards."~~ Technical details on each can be found here ~~

Realistically there's no way on God's green Earth any incinerator or any of the various electrical power plants will meet the same standards as those using natural gas.


IN SUMMARYBoth Pennsylvania and the federal EPA require that this future incinerator's emissions be (1) Continuously monitored. Neither of the authorities presently require (2) the data be streamed lived to the public. There's absolutely no way known to science to burn fuel (3) that will be as clean burning natural gas. It's simply technologically impossible. Think about what gets flushed into the sewers. Pharmaceuticals, food from disposers, and cleaning products to name a few.

Regarding this ballot initiative: (1) Continuous monitoring is a given. (2) Streaming LIVE information is a possible, but that would have to be taken up with the state and federal agencies. (3) Matching the purity of spent natural gas is unrealistic. So most likely two out of three would get tossed in court.

I will say this. If the incinerator operator wanted to be a good neighbor he could allay the public's concerns and stream the emissions data voluntarily. There is nothing stopping him from doing so.

I think the larger consideration here is why there were no provisions written into the city ordnance requiring legal review before a group's ballot proposal could move forward? The other question is why this group wasn't notified well in advance of the council's concerns? Why wait till the last possible day before the city sent it to county? Why didn't council work WITH this group ironing all this out before granting approval quickly for the incinerator before addressing everyone's concerns?

If this group does fail in it's mission to get this on the ballot it doesn't mean they've lost. It just becomes much more difficult. There's nothing preventing them from convincing a member of congress either at the state or federal level to introduce legislation.

If all else fails this group can still keep an eye on things by requesting all the continuous monitoring data through the RTK. Granted things could become a lot more difficult and time consuming if they were to regroup their efforts by creating a watch dog committee, but it's doable. This committee could then put pressure on EPA officials and members of council who might otherwise neglect to thoroughly review the future monitoring data.