Major New Source Review Permitting Projects

The Stoel Rives Air Team knows major new source review. With our long history of advising key players in the power industry, Stoel Rives has advised clients on the Clean Air Act since the early development of the new source review program. We employ this experience to assist our clients in finding the fastest, most efficient means possible of permitting major new sources and major modifications. Representative projects include major modifications at steel mills, cement plants, mineral processing plants, pulp and paper mills and, of course, power plants. We have come up with novel solutions such as using a never before used provision in the Oregon rules to enable a new power plant to receive its PSD air permit 53 days after submittal of the application. Typical processing times in that state are 9 to 12 months. For a wood products source contemplating a major modification, we successfully negotiated with the permitting authority to enable the source to treat the project as a pollution control project thereby avoiding new source review entirely.

Team members have assisted numerous sources on addressing potential collocation issues where either an agency has been pushing to combine two sources that the owners preferred to keep separate as well as where an agency has taken persuasion in order to acknowledge that two sources should be considered one in order to allow intra-source netting to take place. Team members have been heavily involved many other technical issues related to new source review such as establishment of exclusion zones (i.e., establishing where "ambient air" does and does not exist for modeling/air standard compliance purposes).

As part of our experience assisting sources go through new source review, we have developed a deep understanding of the visibility modeling process. Sources developed close to "Class I" areas frequently find that visibility and deposition modeling are the primary hurdles to project permitting. This complex area of air permitting law is driven by guidance and lore and can be very frustrating and confusing to those who have not gone through all of its intricacies on multiple prior occasions. Our experience has helped sources develop strategies that are both cost effective and timely for assessing visibility. Spotting and resolving issues ahead of time in this area of law takes experience that the Stoel Rives Air permitting Team possesses.

The Stoel Rives Air Team has also worked with numerous sources to address historical new source review issues. For example, we assisted a diatomaceous earth plant simultaneously go through the Title V and PSD permitting processes, while responding to an EPA information request and state enforcement action, after it was determined that historic changes in method of operation previously triggered new source review.

Read about the federal New Source Review Rule Changes

Return to the Stoel Rives Air Team