PVC painting factory query

[manderlik@igc.apc.org (Mark Anderlik)]

Dear CCHW folks,

My name is Mark Anderlik and I'm with the St. Joe Valley Greens in South
Bend, Indiana. We recently formed a coalition with local environmentalists,
citizen activists, union workers and farmers to force a new coil steel and
aluminum painting factory to act responsibly in our county. It quickly
became obvious to us that the broader issues of environmental quality, tax
abatements, union labor, governemental accountability, and economic
democracy were the true goals of our coalition. Thus we named ourselves
Citizens Allied for Responsible Economic development (CARE).

A limited partenership called Edcoat is currently building two lines of
roll coil coating application production at a site next to a relatively new
steel mill in the heart of St. Joseph County's prime farmland. Edcoat's
product will be used as siding for garage doors, roofs, etc. Their plans
include applying various primers and finish paints with rollers to the
coiled metal, using natural gas heaters to "dry" the primers and paints,
and using a natural gas fired thermal oxidizer (incinerator) to "eliminate"
90% of the 1746 tons/year of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted in
the "drying" process.

Our efforts currently focus on the VOC emissions and its consequences for
our area, which already marginally meets USEPA ozone standards (VOCs react
with NOx and sunlight to produce smog or groundlevel ozone). In a public
hearing that we requested of the Indiana Dept. Of Environmental Management
(IDEM), a serious concern was raised that no one could give an acceptable
answer to.

Two of Edcoat's proposed products use a PVC primer and a PVC finish coat
(product ID numbers 368-25Y27-0261 and 373-30W27-0433A, respectively). The
question was: do the PVC coatings get into the incinerator? and does this
pose a dioxin threat? The IDEM hearing commissioner has not provided an
answer yet, and the engineer who filled out Edcoat's pollution permit
application told me that "no data exists" regarding this kind of industrial
operation and dioxin production.

We would appreciate any information you or others may have on this topic.

On behalf of CARE and the St. Joe Valley Greens, thank you.

Yours for a Green future, Mark

P.S.  Please excuse me if this has already been posted.

Yours for a Green future,  Mark