Feb 20, 2003
IPC announced today that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has signed a final rule on Metal Products and Machinery (MP&M) effluent limit guidelines. The final is "subtantially different" from the regulations discussed in the January 2001 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which called for regulations that would have made wastewater discharge limits 95% more stringent for PCB manufacturers and introduced national discharge limits for electronics manufacturing services facilities for the first time, said industry association IPC. The final rule does not contain any new regulations for the PCB or EMS industries, according to IPC.
�We are very delighted with the decision by EPA. PCB manufacturers already meet very stringent environmental regulations and the proposed regulations did not provide any substantial environmental benefits,� said John Sharp, IPC Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) committee chair and Teradyne Connection Systems environmental and safety manager. �This recent signing now results in a tremendous cost savings at a very critical time for our industry. The expense would have been a tremendous burden for our industry at any time, but it would have been devastating in today's economic environment.�
In January 2001, EPA first proposed the MP&M effluent limitation guidelines and included a total annualized cost estimate of $147.1 million for the PCB industry or slightly over $250,000 per facility. EPA also calculated that seven PCB facilities would be forced to close due to the costs of complying with the proposed MP&M guidelines, while an additional 301 facilities would have difficulty financing compliance investments or ongoing business investments as a result of the rule.
More than 30 IPC members and staff responded by testifying at various EPA public hearings across the country. Following the public testimony, IPC filed more than 300 pages of written comments in July 2001 that firmly detailed EPA�s failure to properly evaluate its proposed rule�s impact on the PCB industry and revealed the agency�s overestimations of environmental benefits and underestimations of the immense costs for each PCB manufacturer. The comments also requested that EPA assess realistic PCB wastewater treatment capabilities, obtain a true estimate of the pollution expected to be removed by a proposed rule, obtain a more realistic estimate of the cost of compliance, and correct the economic impact analysis.
In addition, Fern Abrams, IPC�s director of environmental policy, testified before a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business, Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform and Oversight in November 2001 regarding EPA's failure to conduct adequate regulatory analysis.
EPA then issued a revised proposal in the form of a June 2002 Notice of Data Availability (NODA), which showed that the economic impact and cost effectiveness of the treatment options were actually much higher than originally projected. In the NODA, EPA predicted that between 28 and 55 facilities would be put out of business by the proposed regulation, a significant increase over the NPRM estimate of seven PCB company closures. The notice also substantially revised its estimate of the pollution removals attributable to the proposed rule, from 1.1 million pound equivalents of pollution from PCB effluent to 165,662 pound equivalents, said IPC.
IPC then responded in August 2002 by filing more written comments on EPA's NODA that both praised EPA for the corrections and called for additional changes to correct the rule's stated environmental benefits.
�IPC's leadership on this issue, combined with the participation of our members, both large and small, forced EPA to react to industry's concerns,� said Abrams. �Our work with other affected industries and the Small Business Administration helped us leverage our influence and wage a victory over a regulation that could have dealt serious and irreparable damage to the entire industry.�
�It was great to see IPC, EPA and the PCB and assembly industry learn to work together during the entire process,� added Sharp. �EPA was very willing to hear our arguments and then revise their models based on input from our industry. We hope this proves to be a great working relationship for future regulations.�
For more information, visit IPC at http://www.ipc.org.
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