Stericyle’s proposed dual incinerator medical waste facility at Rowley could produce more pollution than the company’s current operation in North Salt Lake, according to applications filed with the state.
Stericycle has requested a state permit to operate an incineration facility capable of processing 18,000 tons of waste and emitting up to 40 total tons of key pollutants per year, according to estimates released Monday by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.
According to its 2014 operating permit, the North Salt Lake incinerator has the potential to produce only up to 22 tons of those same pollutants each year.
However, Stericycle officials dispute the possibility of an emissions increase at the new plant, which will be located 19 miles northwest of Grantsville.
Jennifer Koenig, vice president of corporate communications, said she could not speak to specific numbers, but forwarded a company statement that asserts emissions could not increase on account of strict EPA guidelines by which the new incinerator will be bound.
“Given the tightening of emission limits by the U.S. EPA and the state of Utah, there will be less potential to emit,” the statement read, “even with increased capacity, than last year when Stericycle received approvals to begin the relocation process.”
New technologies and increased regulations will decrease emissions by volume and releases of certain important toxins, such as dioxins, are projected to decrease due to those same factors. However, Martin Gray, section manager for the Division of Air Quality engineers tasked with reviewing Stericycle’s application, said he didn’t think an overall emissions decrease was likely given the increased capacity the medical waste handler has requested.
“I just don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said.
Gray said he thought the numbers from the permit application were a “pretty close estimate” of the proposed Rowley facility’s emissions capabilities. He said the numbers were submitted to the Division of Air Quality by Stericycle, based on the company’s own engineering efforts.
Nonetheless, the company’s statement, which was issued Thursday morning via email, is in line with previous statements made by Stericycle officials. In a statement dated April 23, 2014, Koenig, who was then in the process of building local support for the Rowley facility prior to applying for a conditional use permit, said the new facility would produce fewer emissions than the North Salt Lake plant.
“Stericycle is considered a minor source of pollutants according to state evaluations,” she said via email. “However, the emissions will be even less if the facility is moved to a new location. Regulations from the EPA Clean Air Act that went into effect in 2009 require that any newly constructed medical waste incinerator meet even stricter emission standards. These standards require reductions in emissions over 90 percent for several pollutants.”
While the air quality permit application does appear to request an increase in emissions compared to the current plant, the overall total for the proposed Tooele-area facility is not especially significant, according to Jon Black, the Division of Air Quality engineer who is heading the review of Stericycle’s permit application.
He compared the increase to running a 700 kilowatt diesel generator 24 hours a day for an entire year.
If the application were approved as-is, and if the Rowley plant operated at its maximum capacity today, the plant still would not register on a list of Tooele County’s top 10 industrial polluters. State-wide, Black said the hypothetical Rowley plant, which would more than double the processing capacity of Stericycle’s Utah-based incineration operation, would still be considered a minor source of pollution.
The Division of Air Quality reviews numerous factors when considering a new operating permit, including an applicant-submitted list of notable pollutants and the maximum amount of each the applicant could produce were it to operate at maximum capacity in a worst-case scenario.
Reported pollutants include the EPA’s criteria pollutants, common pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, which is known to cause acid rain. The report also lists hazardous pollutants, such as arsenic, which are known to be especially harmful to human health, even in relatively low quantities.
Because the Rowley facility would incorporate new pollution controls that were not available to Stericycle when the North Salt Lake facility was built, some kinds of emissions, especially the hazardous air pollutants, would decrease at the proposed plant, even with the proposed processing capacity expansion.
Emissions of lead, for example, would decrease by 96 percent, according to tables from the state permit application. Dioxins and furan emissions would be cut in half. Yet overall, the Rowley plant’s potential hazardous emissions would increase from 1.66 tons per year to 2.08 tons per year, an increase of roughly 25 percent.
The maximum possible emissions of the EPA’s six criteria pollutants — carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, PM10, PM2.5, sulfur dioxide and volatile organic compounds — could increase across the board, according to the permit application.
Emissions of PM2.5, the small particulates responsible for Tooele Valley’s current non-attainment status, could increase by as much as 41 percent, and emissions of volatile organic compounds, a group of chemicals thought to contribute significantly to the formation of PM2.5 during inversions in Northern Utah, would increase by as much as 340 percent, according to the permit application.
The estimates listed in Stericycle’s permit application all indicated the maximum amount of emissions that could be produced by the Rowley plant, but those potential maximums could change as the permitting process continues, Gray said.
The current application must be reviewed by the state’s environmental engineers — a process that will take at least 30 days, according to DEQ spokeswoman Donna Spangler — and then must undergo a public comment process that will also take a month or more.
The permit and all the projections it entails are not final until the permit is formally approved, which may not take place for 12-18 months.