In 2011, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for gold ore processing and production facilities. This rule is set forth in Volume 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 63 Subpart EEEEEEE (40 CFR 63 Subpart EEEEEEE). These gold ore processing and production facilities are required to obtain a federal permit under 40 CFR part 70 or 40 CFR part 71 (Title V operating permit), even if they are not associated with a major source.
To track emissions at the national level, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires Oregon (and other states) to conduct statewide inventories from all sources of air pollution. These data collected from across the country are used for making new rules and modeling air pollution.
A few years in the making, Cleaner Air Oregon (CAO) addresses this need and is already affecting many companies in the state. As of November 2018, all permitted facilities should have already submitted emissions inventories for their sources to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
The state of Oregon has proposed a new set of rules, currently in the draft state, for a risk-based air toxics permitting program; the program is named “Cleaner Air Oregon.” The stated goal of Cleaner Air Oregon is to reduce health risks from existing industrial facilities to below 100 in 1 million by 2030. To accomplish this goal, the state of Oregon will require emissions reductions from facilities for which the aggregate health risk, based on predicted health risk from 260 chemicals with known health-protective levels, is above the 100 in 1 million threshold.
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