7. Emissions monitoring and limits
These are emissions limits and appropriate measures for monitoring emissions to air and water for a regulated facility permitted to store, treat or transfer (or both) non-hazardous and inert waste.
We may set emission limits and monitoring requirements in your permit, based upon your treatment process, emissions inventory and environmental risk assessment. An emissions inventory means a complete and detailed list of all waste waters and waste gases that you handle or produce at your facility.
If your environmental permit requires you to monitor emissions, you must do so following our monitoring guidance. You may need monitoring infrastructure to meet the relevant standards.
1.Your facility’s emissions inventory must include information about the relevant characteristics of point source emissions to air, such as the:
- average values and variability of flow and temperature
- average and peak concentration and load values of relevant substances and their variability
- presence of other substances that may affect the waste gas treatment system or plant safety, for example, oxygen, nitrogen, water vapour and dust
Guidance on monitoring stack emissions is available.
2. You must monitor fugitive emissions of dust and particulates if they are likely to cause pollution at sensitive receptors, or if this has been substantiated. There is guidance on developing monitoring strategies for assessing levels of pollutants in the ambient atmosphere and monitoring particulate matter in ambient air around waste facilities.
3. You must describe your monitoring programme in your dust management plan. Visual monitoring is not effective for assessing the risk of emissions of fine particulates, for example PM10. You should use dust and particulate monitors with trigger alarms instead.
You should set alarm trigger levels to alert site staff when short-term particulate concentrations are elevated, so that you can review site practices or increase your mitigation measures. When combined with weather data, dust and particulate monitors can also provide evidence to demonstrate that your facility is not the cause of complaints. You should use a particulate limit of 75 µg/m3 to100 µg/m3 (over a 5 minute average) for PM10 as an initial trigger for action, and reduce this after the system has been in place for some time.
1. If you operate medium combustion plant or specified generators you must monitor your emissions following the Environment Agency guidance on Monitoring stack emissions: low risk MCPs and specified generators and maintain a record of the type and quantity of fuel used in the plant.
2. If you have a generator that uses natural gas, for example in a boiler, you must comply with the specified generator regulations.
3. You must keep periods of start-up and shut-down for medium combustion plant and specified generators to a minimum. You must notify the Environment Agency of newly installed combustion units before start-up.
4. You must notify the Environment Agency at least 14 days in advance of any planned changes to the medium combustion plant or generator which could affect compliance with any emission limits that apply, this includes notifying us of any significant upgrades.
1. Your facility’s emissions inventory must include information about the relevant characteristics of point source emissions to water or sewer, such as:
- average values and variability of flow, pH and conductivity
- average concentration and load values of relevant substances and their variability, for example, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC), metals, priority substances or micropollutants
- data on bio-eliminability, for example, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), BOD to COD ratio, biological inhibition potential (for example, inhibition of activated sludge)
2. For relevant emissions to water or sewer identified by the emissions inventory, you must monitor key process parameters (for example, waste water flow, pH, temperature, conductivity or BOD) at appropriate locations. For example, these could either be at the:
- inlet or outlet (or both) of the pre-treatment
- inlet to the final treatment
- point where the emission leaves the facility boundary