Photo: A jubilant City Councilman Donovan Richards (at lectern) last week detailed the city’s updated Air Code after Council voted for major overhaul. Photo Courtesy of the NY City Council.
A busy City Council last week approved a comprehensive update to the Air Pollution Control Code to improve the outdoor air quality in the Big Apple.
Introduction 271-A, sponsored by Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Laurelton), chairman of the Committee on Environmental Protection, brings the Air Code into compliance with more stringent state and federal air quality laws, rules and regulations. The law, according to the Council, will result in boilers operating more efficiently, engines and generators operating more cleanly, less fuel consumption citywide and the reduction of thousands of tons of particulate matter per year.
Some specific changes to the Air Code include: simplifying compliance by expanding the number of boilers that can be filed through the less-cumbersome registration process; streamlining the permit process by allowing online permitting; limiting emissions from currently uncontrolled sources, including commercial char broilers, fireplaces, cook stoves, outdoor wood boilers, mobile vending units and wood-burning heaters; requiring the most stringent Environmental Protection Agency certified emissions standards for newly registered non-emergency stationary generators after 2018; and the phase out of school buses that do not utilize a closed crankcase ventilation system by 2020.
“Air pollution has contributed to deaths, high rates of asthma and hospitalizations for respiratory related illnesses,” Donovan lamented. “Clearly something needed to be done…”
By Michael V. Cusenza michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
