comcom
by James N McClatchey
<jnm@safn2.saf.com>
(I gave the following statement at the EPA Public Hearing on June 28)
Comments on Metal Products and Machinery Effluent Guidelines
Public Hearing - June 28, 1995
My name is James N. McClatchey. I am Vice-President and Pro-
duction Manager of Southern Aluminum Finishing Company. We have
facilities which batch sulfuric acid anodize aluminum on a job
shop basis in Atlanta, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina. We
also continuously coil anodize material in a facility in
Nashville, Tennessee. As is typical in our industry, these are
small facilities and our company wide employment is under 100
people. Like most companies in our industry, we have experience
with Part 413, Part 433, and with local limits which are lower
than either. At our Charlotte facility, we have lime and settle
technology as described in the proposed rule. I am also Chair of
a recently formed Effluent Limitations Task Group of the Aluminum
Anodizers Council (AAC). The AAC is a group of approximately 45
small to medium size anodizers in the US and Canada. The Task
Group was formed to gather data and enter public comments to the
proposed rule. Those comments will be submitted later. We
strongly urge EPA to extend the comment period an additional 90
days.
The AAC and the anodizing community as whole is extremely
concerned about the new effluent limitations as proposed in Part
438. We believe essential parts of these regulations are unclear,
parts are unattainable with the lime and settle technology that
is the chosen technology for achieving the limits in the rule,
and that EPA has failed so far to make a case that that the cost
of compliance, at least in the already regulated anodizing indus-
try, is justified by the results obtained.
We have only had this rule in our hands for a few weeks, and
we are not currently in a position to provide the data to illus-
trate our position. We have retained legal counsel here in Wash-
ington, and we intend to file more detailed comments at a later
time. Nevertheless, it is possible to point out some areas in the
rule that do not bear up under scrutiny.
1. The unit operations covered by the rule are far too broad.
The metal industry is far too diverse in size and type of
operation for a "one size fits all" rule to be reasonable.
Why should abrasive blasting, anodizing, electrical dis-
charge machining, and heat treating, just to name a few, all
be regulated under a single rule? The rule preamble contains
large sections devoted to EPA's resistance to sub-
categorization of this rule. It is not convincing, and
serves only the interest of regulators to keep it simple and
not the ends of reasonableness or fairness. While we appre-
ciate the attempt to exclude extremely small waste water
dischargers, we believe the cutoff of 4000 gal per day is
far too low and will impact small metal finishing facilities
adversely. This cutoff limit should be adjusted based on
unit operation.
2. The economic analysis is flawed. Because of the overly
broad scope of the rule, the economic analysis lumps
together a disparate group of companies, and fails to detail
how this rule will impact particular industries. The eco-
nomic analysis should at least differentiate between indus-
tries that are currently meeting 433 (or 413) as opposed to
those who are unregulated. In the anodizing industry in par-
ticular, because of the relatively clean nature of our
effluent, the imposition of the 438 limits in place of 433
will cost many companies large amounts of money with rela-
tively little reduction in the absolute amounts of effluent
metals.
3. This rule is unjust because it is unclear. The rule shows
the regulated community only half of the story. This is a
mass based rule, but the guidance for determining water use
limits is little more than an outline. This guidance should
be made more detailed and made part of the rule itself. Here
also, there is a problem with the overly broad nature of the
rule. Different unit operations will have vastly different
waste water production. If the water conservation guidance
is to be fair, it must account for the different unit opera-
tions. This is a critical area that is manifestly unclear at
this point.
The problem with leaving this in the guidance and not part
of the rule is that States with delegated water programs
generally adopt the rule but not the guidance or preamble.
We in the regulated community have no way to know the true
impact of this rule because the States may make very differ-
ent interpretations of this guidance or ignore it alto-
gether.
4. In the anodizing industry itself, we have grave concerns
about the attainability of the aluminum level of 1.0 ppm. We
believe we can gather data to illustrate that even with lime
and settle facilities operated at peak efficiency that this
limit for aluminum is not consistently attainable in our
industry. If aluminum is to become a regulated pollutant,
then we believe that EPA needs to do some basic scientific
work on the solubility of aluminum in water. This is a very
complex subject because of the various forms aluminum can
take in water and its amphoteric nature. We believe that
aluminum's use as a marker is misguided. We also believe EPA
must do more sampling of anodizing facilities in particular.
Our understanding is that only one anodizing facility was
examined in the monitoring that forms the basis for the
rule.
5. Finally we must object in principle to the use of two benign
metals, aluminum and iron, as markers for other metals. It
is not hard to imagine in areas of the country where produc-
tion wells are in use, that one may have to treat wastewater
simply because the iron content of the incoming well water
is higher than allowed by the limits. It violates common
sense and will surely lead to unintended consequences to
make the two most abundant metallic elements of the earth's
crust regulated pollutants. That there are no POTW removal
credits available for these elements makes the rule even
more untenable.
We hope by the end of the requested 180 day comment period
to be able to gather and analyze data which will illustrate these
as well as perhaps other areas of concern. We are not prepared
today to offer alternative strategies, but we hope to open a con-
structive dialog with EPA so that the regulatory framework that
governs the anodizing industry can be modified substantially from
that outlined in this propose rule. Thank you for your time and
attention.
James N. McClatchey P.E.
Southern Aluminum Finishing Company
1581 Huber St. N.W.
Atlanta, Ga. 30318
Aluminum Anodizers Council
1000 N. Rand Road, Suite 214
Wauconda, Il. 60084
James N. McClatchey (Southern Aluminum Finishing Co, Atlanta, GA, USA)
Architectural Aluminum. Custom Fabrication. Paint, Powder Coating, Anodizing.
jnm@saf.com Compuserve: 76167,2535 Voice: 404-355-1560 Fax: 404-350-0581
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