National Clothesline

With a deadline looming, there was a push last month in both the press and in formal comments to get the Environmental Protection Agency to toughen its stance on drycleaning plants located in buildings with residences and other businesses.

As part of a broader rule updating its air regulations for perc drycleaners, EPA in December proposed two options that would place additional restrictions on “co-located” drycleaning plants. The agency originally said it would take comments on its proposals until February, but that deadline was postponed until March 23. As the final deadline neared, an article in the Washington Post and a formal comment from a New York State environmental agency urged EPA to go further with its co-location restrictions.

EPA has proposed two options for drycleaning plants in buildings that also house residences. One, called the risk-based option, would prohibit new perc drycleaning machines in co-residential facilities. This would lead to an eventual phase-out of perc in these facilities as existing equipment meets the end of its lifespan. To accelerate the phase-out, EPA might implement a “sunset” provision for currently installed perc equipment.

Also under consideration is a technology-based option, which would entail requirements similar to those already in place in New York where cleaners in co-residential facilities must have fourth-generation machines and vapor barrier rooms that ventilate outside the building.

EPA estimates there are about 1,300 co-residential drycleaners nationwide. About 80 percent of those are in areas that already regulate co-residential situations — mainly New York State and the San Francisco Bay area. But EPA noted that it has actual data from only a handful of states and that its total of 1,300 is only an estimate. Based on that estimate, and after subtracting co-residential facilities that are already regulated, EPA believes that fewer than 300 cleaners nationwide would be affected by either of those two regulatory options.

The National Cleaners Association has been urging its members to write to EPA to support the technology-based option over the risk-based option. Many have done so, but none have garnered the public attention accorded by the Washington Post to Judith Schreiber, a scientist for the New York attorney general’s Environmental Protection Bureau. She told the Post in an article published March 20 that the EPA proposal, which is based on standards adopted in New York in 1997, is not tough enough.

People who live in buildings with drycleaning plants “have no idea they’re being exposed to perc,” Schreiber told the Post. “We have a public health threat here, and we have to protect people.”

The Post article also sounded an alarm from a lobbyist for state and local air pollution officials.

“The public health risks from drycleaners that share a building with residences or other businesses are alarming,” said William Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials. “If these were Superfund sites, they would have been shut down long ago. If these were drinking water supplies, the spigots would have been turned off immediately.”

The Washington Post article brought a response from NCA Executive Director Nora Nealis. “With the end of the NESHAP comments period drawing near, the environmental lobby is in the limelight campaigning against the continued use of perc in co-located buildings,” Nealis wrote in an e-mail appealing again to cleaners to submit comments to EPA before the March 23 deadline.

She noted the “other businesses” references in the Becker comments as evidence that environmentalists would like to expand the co-location issue beyond residences to include cleaning plants located in buildings shared with others businesses. This could include drycleaners in strip malls, for example, and would greatly expand the impact of co-location regulations.

Indeed, a New York state environmental official did just that in formal comments submitted to EPA in a March 20 letter.

Writing on behalf of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Carl Johnson, deputy commissioner in the Office of Air and Waste Management, objected to EPA calling drycleaners in commercial, strip shopping malls as “free-standing.” He said EPA should have three different levels of regulations for perc drycleaners: mixed use residential, as in apartment buildings; mixed-use commercial, as in strip malls; and stand-alone.

For mixed-use residential cleaners, he said the DEC recommends using EPA’s proposed risk-based option — preventing new perc cleaning machines in co-residential facilities and eliminating transfer machines. For mixed-use commercial settings, the DEC recommends that EPA apply its proposed technology-based controls, including definitive requirements for fourth-generation equipment, vapor barriers, leak inspections, annual compliance inspections and certification by an approved training program.

Whether EPA expands its regulations for co-located drycleaning facilities to include commercial as well as residential situations won’t be known until the agency issues its final rule, probably this summer. When the proposal was originally released last December, EPA stated that “risks from most drycleaners across the country generally are low, and our proposed requirements would make them even lower.” The question of cleaners located in apartment buildings was an area that EPA specifically said it wanted to get more information.

If EPA goes beyond its original proposal on that issue, significantly more cleaners would be affected by the new rules. If the agency sticks to the parameters of its original proposal, the main issue for most cleaners would be a requirement for more monitoring and testing for perc leaks. This would entail purchasing a $250 halogenated carbon leak detector for conducting monthly leak detection in addition to the already required weekly inspection for leaks that can be spotted without measuring instruments.

EPA is also proposing a final phase-out of an estimated 200 transfer drycleaning machines still in operation. They would have to be replaced with fourth-generation machines, i.e., no-vent equipment with refrigerated condensers and secondary carbon adsorbers.

Cleaners with second- and third-generation equipment could continue using those machines, but when they are replaced, they would have to buy fourth-generation machines if they want to continue using perc.

EPA would have additional requirements for about 15 cleaners classified as “major source.” Those plants, which purchase more than 2,100 gallons of perc a year, would be required to install fourth-generation equipment and use a photoionization detector or other gas analyzer for leak detection. Those leak detection units cost about $3,000.