Consultant: USN Violated Permit

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

An environmental consultant says that it appears state regulators will take no action against a Greene County chemical firm even though the company's own test results clearly show a violation.
D. Howard Gebhart of Air Resource Specialists said he does not expect that the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation will act on a detailed complaint he recently filed in behalf of local opponents of the US Nitrogen LLC operations.
Gebhart said a recent summary by a TDEC official of the April tests of emissions from the Midway company indicates that action by the agency is unlikely.
"TDEC appears to be ignoring the basic Clean Air Act principle of 'any credible evidence,'which allows any credible evidence to be used to establish compliance/noncompliance,"Gebhart said.
A TDEC official has issued a statement in which he stated that the April tests were not conducted to establish compliance and that the compliance was established in 2016.
Gebhart was also critical of the TDEC official's conclusion that the April tests were conducted under conditions that were not representative of the historical operation of the ammonium nitrate manufacturer.
He said that if the tests were not conducted under the usual conditions "then the results would be useless for establishing the appropriate conditions for future source operation, which was the stated purpose of the testing."
Gebhart noted that the TDEC report cites the fact that an anti-pollution device in use at US Nitrogen during the April test was contaminated.
"To me, this also implies that USN has not been properly operating and maintaining the (SCR) emissions control equipment,"Gebhart said.
The company has told TDEC that it plans to do additional testing later this month.