The public hearing for the air quality permit has been set. This public hearing will be held on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at the North Buncombe High School auditorium located at 890 Clarks Chapel Road, Weaverville, NC from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Individuals can register to speak at the hearing and/or submit written comments. Participants will be allowed to speak up to three minutes, but the hearing officer will have discretion to reduce speaking times if it is necessary to accommodate the number of speakers.

Persons wishing to comment on the draft permit are required to submit their comments in writing to the WNCRAQA, or in person at the public hearing being held on Wednesday, May 26, 2010. Comments must be received by the WNCRAQA no later than June 2, 2010. All comments received on or prior to that date will be considered by the WNCRAQA in making its final decision to issue the permit. Written comments should be mailed to the Western North Carolina Regional Air Quality Agency, 49 Mount Carmel Road, Asheville, NC 28806, or emailed to Ashley Featherstone, at ashley.featherstone@buncombecounty.org.

This is likely to be the last vehicle for stopping the plant prior to its beginning its operation. That makes it that much more critical that we turn out and speak at the Public Hearing.

Typically, the WNC Air Quality Board evaluates permit applications based on a checklist of permissible toxin emissions provided by the State and based on EPA standards. Although the standards that are applied were created with an assumption that these kinds of uses would be located in an industrial area,the Board has no criteria that takes into account what surrounds the plant (a residential neighborhood) or the proximity of nearby houses (less than 100 feet).

Other counties and state require specific setbacks from residential neighborhoods. For example, the Australian Environmental Protection Agency in section 5.1 of their “Environmental guidelines for concrete batch plants” requires a setback for a concrete batch plant of 328 feet from a residence. See here for their regulations.

Although the WNC Air Quality Board does not address the issue of residential proximity to the source of toxic emissions, their legal underpinnings and mission are very clear that their regulations need to be applied with the purpose of protecting the public health. Their mission and excerpts from their founding documents may be found here

Their criteria for evaluating concrete batch plants and their permissible toxins criteria may be found here

A pending letter to the EPA may be found here

The Public Hearing for the Blue Ridge Concrete Plant application for an air quality permit can be found here. Rules for public testimony may be found here. The draft approval language for the application may be found here.

An example of an earlier evaluation of a concrete batch plant may be found here

The actual application for Blue Ridge Concrete was submitted in mid March. It will be found here. Their proposed site plan is here. A dawing of their proposed mixing equiptment and stack may be found here.