The notice of violation (NOV), which includes data reported to the EPA by SunCoke, also claims the company was using more than one bypass stack at a time, also against regulations.
These alleged violations overlap an outstanding NOV issued by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in December for excess bypass emissions that has yet to be resolved.
While the U.S. EPA has not done a health study in Franklin Furnace, George Czerniak, chief of the air enforcement and compliance assurance branch for Region 5, said limits are in place because they have “underpinnings in protecting people’s health and welfare.”
Repeated calls to SunCoke officials were not returned.
Harrison said the company is still scheduling a time to meet with the U.S. EPA to discuss this latest NOV, Harrison said.
With a recently-issued New Source Review permit in hand to build its Middletown plant near Monroe’s border, Lisa Frye, president of SunCoke Watch Inc., said such violations make trusting the company to stay in compliance “ludicrous.”
“(This) couldn’t have come at a better time as far as the criticism all of those who have fought this plant have taken,” she said. “This is just one more example of why we can’t stop.”
To Chuck Inwood, a Monroe resident and member of SunCoke Watch, the latest NOV means either SunCoke’s design doesn’t work, their staff is incapable of operating the plant properly, or the company is “in willful disregard of the limits of the permit.”
“I think it is terrifying if we think that this same thing is going to be here next door to a school, next door to a nursing home,” he said. “I think anybody ought to be scared.”
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