Since 1995, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Policy Office has worked with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), U.S. EPA Region 2, and a stakeholder group of industry, environmental groups and community representatives on a project with the batch chemical manufacturing industry in New Jersey. The New Jersey Chemical Industry Project is an effort to assess current environmental protection strategies on a sector basis and to develop better approaches for environmental protection.
This project builds on the work of the Chemical Operations Group of President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). The PCSD recommended this project to complement a pilot project at a continuous process chemical manufacturing plant. Batch process chemical manufacturers may face different environmental challenges than continuous process manufacturers, and thus may require different environmental systems to operate in a "cleaner, cheaper, smarter" manner. To delineate these potential differences, this project has focused on batch chemical manufacturing. Since the State of New Jersey has a very high concentration of batch chemical firms, the EPA chose it as the state to carry out pilot projects designed to help improve approaches to ensure environmental protection.
The EPA and NJDEP started the project by asking stakeholder group what inspires companies to achieve -- or keeps them from achieving – better environmental performance. From this information, they developed a list of 45 issues for possible pilot projects to test new environmental protection strategies. The stakeholder group chose to focus on four pilots: exchanges of "waste" across facilities, trading effluent limits, regulatory compliance assistance, and development of a flexible track for good environmental performers. This article summarizes the findings to date of these initiatives, which should be of interest to batch chemical manufacturers around the U.S. While the EPA support of this project is ending soon, a small work group from industry and the NJDEP is continuing to meet and work on follow-on activities related to the compliance assistance and flexible track pilots.
Compliance Assistance
The objective of the Compliance Assistance Pilot is to improve environmental compliance within the batch chemical industry by identifying which forms of compliance assistance are most beneficial to the industry, and what kinds of assistance have the most potential for improving environmental performance. By developing mechanisms that allow the regulated community to better understand its environmental obligations, compliance rates can be increased, which in turn will further the goal of environmental protection. Although this pilot project was designed to focus on the needs of the batch chemical industry in particular, the products are also useful to other segments of the regulated community.
The Compliance Assistance Pilot is the furthest along among the four projects, and the only one with a tangible output so far. After two months of work to assess the existing compliance assistance resources and survey the regulated community about its compliance needs, the pilot team, consisting of representatives from the EPA, the NJDEP and industry, has found that the primary barrier to compliance was unclear presentation and ineffective dissemination of information. As a result, this team has prepared a series of materials (Compliance Assistance Materials, or CAM) that focus on the New Jersey environmental regulatory requirements. There are three main components of the CAM: 1) a list of the major New Jersey environmental regulations with a short, plain English description and contact phone numbers of experts who can answer questions; 2) applicability flow charts for six of those regulations, which helps businesses to quickly understand what they need to do to comply with the regulations; and 3) a bibliography of resource materials to help facilities comply with New Jersey and Federal regulations. The CAM is posted on the NJDEP web page under the Compliance and Enforcement Division. In addition, two compliance assistance workshops for the chemical manufacturing industry were held during the fall of 1998. The NJDEP is continuing to work with an industry committee to maintain and update the package and plan possible future workshops.
Flexible Track Program
The goal of the Flexible Track Pilot is to design and implement an optional regulatory track for regulated facilities exhibiting strong records of environmental compliance and a commitment to improved performance. The premise of this program is that different levels of environmental performance warrant varied levels of regulatory oversight. Many current requirements are based on the assumption that companies will evade their regulatory responsibilities when possible. The result is high transaction costs (such as reporting and frequent inspections) and limits on flexibility, which leads to frequent permitting modifications or constraints on a firm’s ability to implement cost-effective process or materials changes. The flexible track is designed to encourage companies to achieve compliance and continually improve their performance. It offers benefits to the companies in the form of lower transaction costs, the opportunity to implement eco-efficient strategies, and better relations with communities and regulators. The public would benefit through improved environmental performance from participants, better information about facility operations, and more responsiveness to community concerns. For regulators, this program should allow them to expend fewer resources overseeing high-performing facilities and to focus their oversight on facilities with problems in their performance. The Pilot Team, now under the charge of the NJDEP, has developed another pilot program to provide an optional regulatory track for industrial facilities with strong records of environmental compliance. This program is called the "Silver Track" and the NJDEP is currently accepting applications for participants. The Pilot Team is also working to develop a program that provides an optional "Gold Track" for facilities with even stronger records of environmental compliance, which will commit to the highest levels of environmental performance. The NJDEP is working with the EPA's Project XL (eXcellence and Leadership) to offer incentives for participants, including flexibility for complying with certain EPA regulations.
Effluent Trading
In effluent trading, a company with lower-than-required pollutant levels in their wastewater (effluent) sells an effluent credit to an other facility that cannot afford to meet its effluent limits for that same pollutant within the same watershed. The EPA has formally sanctioned effluent trading in watersheds since the issuance of its policy statement and draft framework on effluent trading in 1996, though it has allowed effluent trading on a case-by-case basis since the early 1980s. A subset of the stakeholder group along with several additional experts formed the Pilot Team for an effluent trading pilot. This Pilot Team worked to facilitate trading of local effluent pretreatment limits within the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners’ (PVSC) treatment area. This is the first ever trade in the U.S. between facilities that discharge to a publicly-owned sewage treatment plant ("indirect dischargers"). In addition, trades have already occurred between Fabricolor and another firm in Paterson (copper).
Effluent trading among indirect discharges can produce a variety of benefits for the environment and industrial facilities. The regulations governing trading at PVSC require that trades incorporate an overall reduction in the amount of pollutants discharged from participating facilities. Trading also provides greater flexibility to facilities in meeting local discharge limits. At the same time, the Pilot Team has generalized some key steps and barriers that facilities face as they attempt to establish trades. First, there is a need for local regulations authorizing trading. Second, it is most productive for the trading option to be introduced to the industrial user community when new local pretreatment limits are being developed or existing ones are being revised, thus allowing potential trading partners to begin discussions early on how to best meet the new or revised limits. One significant barrier preventing additional effluent trades is lack of information. The Pilot Team has suggested that the process of developing trades would benefit from establishing trading teams within water treatment districts.
Materials Exchange Across Facilities
A material that is "waste" from one facility can often be safely used as a raw material or feedstock to another facility in material exchanges across facilities. Such transactions can help to reduce the cost of transportation and waste disposal for the output facility, and the raw material input costs for the receiving facility. Facility managers often decide to forgo this recycling however, because of concerns that hazardous waste regulations will make the activity too burdensome. The Materials Recycling Pilot Team developed five scenarios of materials recycling activities that could be found at typical batch chemical facilities. These scenarios include a statement of the current process, the proposed activity, and a clear statement of how the hazardous waste regulations would apply. The proposed activities described in three of the scenarios - Trading Neutralization Chemicals, Wastewater Alcohol Reuse, and Characteristic By-Product Recycling - do not trigger hazardous waste regulations as long as certain conditions are met. Pilot Team member companies implemented the Alcohol Reuse scenario and documented more than $1200 in net savings from just a five-day trial, plus environmental benefits from reduced transportation and disposal of waste alcohol and reduced manufacture of fresh alcohol. The Pilot Team prepared a report documenting the scenarios and the regulatory response to encourage innovative thinking about recycling activities. Because the New Jersey Hazardous Waste regulations are consistent with the Federal rules, the information in the report should be useful in other areas where the Federal rules apply.
Conclusion
The New Jersey Chemical Industry Project has made environmental protection more user-friendly and it has also encouraged the chemical industry in New Jersey to work more closely with the NJDEP and the EPA. It is clear that the project results thus far hold great promise for increasing the level of cost-effective environmental protection in New Jersey and many of the approaches developed could be adopted in other states as well.
For More Information
Alan Bogard, Infineum USA, Environmental Group Leader: 908-474-7477, alan.bogard@infineum.com
Joseph Gentile, CasChem Bayonne and New Jersey Chemical Industry Council: 201-858-7862, jgentile@m1.cambrex.com
Peg Hanna, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection: 609-633-0346, phanna@dep.state.nj.us
Chuck McCarty, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Small Business Assistance Program: 609-292-3600, cmmccarty@dep.state.nj.us
Catherine Tunis, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Policy Development: 202-260-2698, tunis.catherine@epamail.epa.gov
