Court denies extension on Boiler MACT rule

Says EPA must have rule in place by Feb. 21

Heath E Combs -- Furniture Today, January 20, 2011

WASHINGTON — The U.S. District Court here today denied a motion by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to extend the release of final rules on Boiler MACT by 15 months, and said a rule must be in place by Feb. 21.

The EPA was seeking an extension that would have given the agency until April 2012 to adopt any such rule, and would have allowed another public comment period.

Boiler MACT which stands for Maximum Achievable Control Technology. Furniture manufacturers have argued that the rule will prevent them from using wood as a combustible fuel for their boilers. Several domestic furniture makers visited U.S. senators last month to issue a plea for an extension.

Officials with the American Home Furnishings Alliance, which had lobbied for the extension, were unavailable for comment at press time.

As proposed, the boiler rule would lump dry wood fuel used in furniture plant boilers into a larger biomass category that includes less clean fuels such as "wet" wood, pulp, bark and animal waste.

The court said today that the deadline for having a rule in place would be extended to Feb. 21 to allow the EPA additional time to complete its obligations under the Clean Air Act and issue emission standards.

It was unclear when enforcement of the rule would begin. The court noted that the EPA said it expected a further challenge of the rule.

The case extends back 10 years, when the Sierra Club sued the EPA for not promulgating various rules under the Clean Air Act.

In its ruling, the court said that deadlines originally slated for June 15, 2009, were extended a number of times and that the EPA had not justified its requests for another extension, nor did it show that it could speed up the process.

The EPA said it was seeking another extension to propose revised rules because it said it received comments that shed new light on a number of key areas, including the scope and coverage of the rules and the way to categorize the various boiler-types.