New boiler rule easier, cheaper
Heath E Combs -- Furniture Today, March 25, 2011
HIGH POINT — U.S. companies with domestic furniture factories appear pleased with new Clean Air Act rules recently released by the Environmental Protection Agency for industrial boilers that use wood waste as fuel.
The Clean Air Act rule is often referred to as Boiler MACT, which stands for Maximum Achievable Control Technology. The rule, which is still subject to further review, affects about 200,000 industrial boilers in the United States.
The American Home Furnishings Alliance said that compared with earlier EPA proposals, the new boiler rules will make it easier and less expensive for domestic furniture manufacturers to meet federal air quality standards.
Those boilers commonly used by these manufacturers won't be required to meet specific emission limits. Companies will be required to perform a boiler tune-up every two years to improve combustion efficiency and reduce toxic air emissions, the AHFA said.
For larger boilers, the rules will lead to one-time compliance costs for add-on pollution control equipment to smokestacks of about $200,000 per stack, according to AHFA estimates. That's far less than the $3 million per stack for costlier particulate collection and emission controls that an earlier proposal would have required, the AHFA said.
Furniture manufacturers had argued that rules proposed last year would have increased their costs and prevented them from burning wood, a waste product from manufacturing.
Furniture executives took at least six trips to Washington to lobby for more industry- friendly changes to the rule, said Wyatt Bassett, CEO of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture. He said that as originally drafted last year, the rules might have idled factories.
"We were not against the rule. We just wanted something with a more beneficial impact to industry," Bassett said. "Most of the wood, if we couldn't burn it, would end up in landfills."
Donald Bisson, vice president of government and industry affairs for the Composite Panel Assn., said there is still some confusion about how much formaldehyde content is allowed in resinated trim and wood, a byproduct of the panel production process.
Many if not all production lines in the composite panel industry use sanded, resinated wood as a fuel source. The initial assessment is that it will qualify as fuel, Composite Panel Assn. officials said. Bisson said the EPA's criteria require that formaldehyde content in that fuel not be significantly higher than in natural wood. The CPA is seeking clarification on what was meant by "significantly," he said.
Bisson said the formaldehyde limit could have an effect on boilers in small furniture manufacturing plants that burn plywood, particleboard or MDF trim and could mean they would have to dispose of that material.
Composite panel is commonly used in case goods production, in ready-to-assemble furniture and for frames in upholstered seating.
John Bassett III, chairman of Vaughan-Bassett, said that his company has about four wood boilers at its plants in Virginia and North Carolina. He said the AHFA deserves much of the credit for keeping the industry's interests in front of regulators for the past several years.
"This is why it's so important for us to be a part of this association," Bassett said. "If we had not stuck together as an organization it would have affected a tremendous amount of products in this country and resonated at retail."
Bassett said he was especially grateful for the efforts of Bill Perdue, the AHFA's vice president of regulatory affairs, who has spent 15 years working on the boiler rule.
Perdue confirmed that, indeed, he attended the Industrial Combustion Coordinated Rulemaking to address boiler emissions held by the EPA in October 1996 in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was working for manufacturer Pulaski Furniture at the time, and was representing the AHFA, then the American Furniture Manufacturers Assn., at the meeting.
The AHFA said that the "battle is likely far from over" on the boiler rule. The group said it will closely watch the EPA's plans for further public review of the emissions standards for large and small boilers. It said it plans to "actively participate in the reconsideration process to seek further improvements in the rules and to ensure future modifications do not adversely impact member companies."
The EPA has projected that by limiting toxic emissions into the air, the new rules will prevent between 2,600 to 6,600 premature deaths, 4,100 heart attacks and 42,000 asthma attacks per year by 2014.
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