Air pollution down sharply in Shelby County, but so are revenues
The Health Department's program regulataing major pollution sources depends on emission fees for funding.
Air pollution down sharply in Shelby County, but so are revenues The Health Department's program regulataing major pollution sources depends on emission fees for funding. Check out this story on commercialappeal.com: http://memne.ws/2nOatCR
Tom Charlier, USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee Published 7:09 p.m. CT March 24, 2017 | Updated 10:02 a.m. CT March 27, 2017
March 24, 2017 - Scheduled for retirement next year is the 58-year-old TVA Allen Fossil Plant, the largest single source of air pollution in Shelby County.(Photo: Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)Buy Photo
Air pollution from major factories in Shelby County has declined by more than half during the past decade, but even as local health officials applaud the reduction they're finding that cleaner air has a budgetary downside.
The drawback is that while air pollution is bad for human health and the environment, it's revenue-generator for an important Health Department regulatory program. Plants that are major sources of "priority" pollutants — nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulates and volatile organic compounds — pay a fee for each ton they discharge, and they also ante up a sum to apply for air-pollution permits.
"It's a good time to be living and breathing in Shelby County," Tyler Zerwekh, administrator of the department's environmental health services bureau, said of the reduction.
Health Department figures show emissions of priority pollutants from major plants and factories totaled 11,482 tons last year, down from 18,826 tons in 2010 and 25,050 tons in 2006. Some of the reductions resulted from plant closures, including the 2015 shuttering of a Cargill plant that accounted for much of a 5,574-ton drop that year, while others were attributable to technological advances or Health Department officials "working with industries to bring down their emissions," Zerwekh said.
But the steep drop in emissions will force the county's Air Pollution Control Board to consider several options, including increasing fees, to balance a proposed fiscal 2018 budget of just over $1 million for the department's Title V major source program, Zerwekh said. Industries now pay a fee of $48 per ton, up about $6 from just a few years ago, and a permit-application charge of $2,000, double from what it was five years ago, to fund the program.
Zerwekh didn't say whether any layoffs were expected. The program, with a staff equal to about 10 full-time employees, inspects and issues highly technical and sometimes-voluminous permits for about 115 facilities.
"This is all federally mandated. You have to have a program to inspect and regulate the industry," Zerwekh said.
The budget squeeze for the program should get even tighter next year. That's when the Tennessee Valley Authority is slated to retire its Allen Fossil Plant, which in 2015 discharged 6,027 tons of priority pollutants, more than half the county's total. The coal-fired plant in Southwest Memphis will be replaced with a much cleaner-burning natural gas-fired facility being built nearby.
The funding problem is not new to the program, however. In 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted a review and cited as a "significant area of concern" a reduction in the county's Title V revenue, which had resulted in a reduction in staff and a growing backlog of permit applications.
Greg Zweig, an environmental consultant for The Chemours Co., formerly Du Pont, said the emissions fees can serve as an incentive for industries to cut back on pollution. "But you get to a point where it can be a burden to business."
Reach Tom Charlier at Thomas.Charlier@commercialappeal.com or on twitter @thomasrcharlier
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