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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 29, 1998
98-181
Contact: Jani Gilbert, Public Information Officer, (509) 456-4464; pager, (509) 622-1289
SPOKANE - A state plan to implement new federal emissions standards for municipal-waste incinerators will be the subject of a public hearing at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 5, at the Spokane County Public Works Building, 1026 W. Broadway.
The federal Clean Air Act requires that the state prepare a plan for how the standards will be applied and enforced in Washington.
In Washington, the only incinerator that meets the criteria to apply the new standards is Spokane's Waste-to-Energy facility. Because of this, the state Department of Ecology (Ecology) will hold only one public hearing, in Spokane.
The new standards are not expected to alter operations at the Waste-to-Energy facility because the facility already complies with the new guidelines.
The Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority (SCAPCA) will hold a hearing at 8:30 a.m., just preceding Ecology's hearing, to amend its regulation to implement and enforce the same federal standards. Ultimately, it is SCAPCA that enforces emission standards at the Waste-to-Energy facility.
Ecology and SCAPCA are conducting the hearings to bring the local regulations up to the federal standards. This is necessary in order to make them locally binding, even though the only facility subject to the new requirements is already meeting them.
For more information, contact Kitty Gillespie (Ecology) at (360) 407-6862 or Kelle Vigeland (SCAPCA) at (509) 477-4727, x 106.
EDITOR'S NOTE: These standards, and thus the subject of the public hearing, in no way relate to the pending health-risk assessment.
Copyright © Washington State Department of Ecology. See http://www.ecy.wa.gov/copyright.html.
