In September 2015, ACP submitted an air permit application for proposed construction and operation of a natural gas-fired compressor station in Buckingham County, Virginia (Buckingham Compressor Station or BCS) 1.5 miles northwest of the intersection of Route 60 and Route 56. After submittal of the original application, ACP made significant design changes to the project. These changes, in addition to additional information requested by DEQ resulted in a revised application being submitted in May 2018. Following this submittal, DEQ requested further information and the application was finally deemed complete in July 2018. All the information received was used in the development of the draft permit which was subject to public comment.
The draft permit is a minor new source review (NSR) permit. For a compressor station to be classified as a major source under NSR, it must have the potential to emit greater than 250 tons per year (tpy) of any regulated NSR pollutant. All the emissions at the BCS will be well below major NSR permit levels with the highest permitted emissions for any pollutant being 43 tpy for particulate matter. DEQ required a thorough Best Available Control Technology (BACT) analysis, air quality dispersion modeling and held a public comment period including a public hearing.
Review
Part of DEQ’s process in developing the permit for the BCS included a comprehensive review of permits for other compressor stations across the United States. Based on the information available at the time of this review, the requirements established in this draft permit make BCS the most stringently controlled compressor station in Virginia and in the United States. The pollutant limits and monitoring requirements in the BCS draft permit are more restrictive than the permits already issued by West Virginia and North Carolina for two similar stations to be located along the ACP.
DEQ required an air quality modeling analysis to demonstrate compliance with the health-based concentrations called National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). In addition, DEQ required the facility to conduct a modeling analysis for specific toxic air pollutants in order to ensure the concentrations would be below the Virginia Significant Ambient Air Concentrations (SAAC). The results of these analyses demonstrate that the facility will not cause any exceedances of regulatory health-based standards.