Air Regulatory Efficiency and Streamlining Effort (EASE) Collaborative: Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Announces January 22nd Public Meeting

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (“ADEQ”) issued a news release announcing a public meeting to “kick-off” what is described as the:

Air Regulatory Efficiency and Streamlining Effort Collaborative (“EASE”)

ADEQ states that EASE will:

. . . bring together interested Arkansans and ADEQ staff to develop solutions to achieve regulatory streamlining goals and establish permitting guidance to assist the regulated community, as well as develop recommendations for streamlining four Arkansas Pollution Control & ecology Commission (APC&EC) regulations. . .which include:

• Regulation 18
• Regulation 19
• Regulation 26
• Regulation 31

By way of background, the current substantive structure of the Arkansas Air Pollution Control programs is provided by these four key regulations. For example, Regulation No. 19 represents the substantive provisions of the Arkansas State Implementation Plan as applicable to state sources in the air permit process. Further, Arkansas promulgated Regulation No. 26 to qualify for delegation of the Clean Air Act Title V operating permit program. Regulation No. 26 is generally a state codification of the federal regulations promulgated to implement the federal Title V program. Permitting pursuant to Regulation No. 18 generally applies to minor sources of air pollutants.

ADEQ states that EASE was formed in response to “comments and feedback received by ADEQ on the pre-proposal draft of the Air Integrated Regulation Streamlining Project.” (Two previous posts describing this project can be found below.)

https://www.mitchellwilliamslaw.com/arkansas-air-regulations-arkansas-department-of-environmental-quality-proposed-streamlining/listening-session

https://www.mitchellwilliamslaw.com/arkansas-air-regulations-arkansas-department-of-environmental-quality-seeks-input-on-pre-proposal-for-streamlining-update

The agency describes the primary goals for EASE as including:

• to remove or update outdated provisions including references to programs that no longer exist, provisions that are no longer applicable facility names that have changed, and vacated and/or stayed provisions;
• to resolve inconsistencies between Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission air regulations, state statutes, and federal regulations; and
• to increase efficiency in future permitting and regulatory revision actions.

The meeting will be held at ADEQ on January 22nd from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

A copy of the news release can be found here.