Page A7 | e-Edition | wvgazettemail.com

This is an aerial photo of the ROCKWOOL stone wool insulation
manufacturing facility near Kearneysville, Jefferson County, shown
here on Sunday, July 21, 2024.

SEAN MCCALLISTER | Gazette-Mail

Ruth Hatcher got so choked up she could barely get the words out.

“ROCKWOOL is a major polluter and should not use a polluter’s loophole to lessen their accountability and their responsibility to anyone,” Hatcher said during a meeting that West Virginia regulators held Tuesday evening.

Hatcher choked up while reporting her husband was diagnosed with lung cancer this year and saying she and others in the area have “skin in the game — as well as our lungs, hearts and the rest of our bodies.”

Nearly all commenters during the 50-minute Department of Environmental Protection virtual meeting were area residents expressing environmental health worries prompted by ROCKWOOL, the Denmark-headquartered company whose affiliate is seeking DEP permit approval for its Jefferson County mineral wool manufacturing facility.

The DEP held the meeting to collect public comment on the proposal by ROXUL USA, Inc. for its facility at 665 Northport Ave., Kearneysville, where it began operating in May 2021, according to DEP records.

Changes made in a permit modification submitted in October 2022 decreased the facility’s potential to emit to less than major-source thresholds in a state legislative rule, Title 45, Series 14, meaning the facility is no longer considered a major source by the DEP.

The rule defines major stationary sources as any of a wide variety of air pollutant sources that emit 100 tons per year of any regulated pollutant under a federal Clean Air Act program that requires industrial facilities to install modern pollution control equipment when they are built or when making a change that significantly increases emissions.

What pollution permit would allow

Under the proposed permit, potential emission limits would include, in tons per year:

• Carbon monoxide: 60.1 (actual 2022 emissions: 14.86)
• Nitrogen oxides: 168.56 (actual 2022 emissions: 49.8)
• Fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, inhalable particles that increase heart disease, asthma and low birth weight risk: 49.8 (actual 2022 emissions: 6.95)
• Sulfur dioxide: 141.34 (actual 2022 emissions: 60.95)
• Formaldehyde, a human carcinogen: 16.64 (actual 2022 emissions: 1.37)
• Total hazardous air pollutants — air toxics known or suspected to cause cancer or other serious health impacts: 263.61 (actual 2022 emissions: 47.01)

Jefferson County resident Daniel Lutz said he was awakened in his bedroom five to six air miles from ROXUL’s facility by the smell of benzene, a carcinogen for which the DEP says 2022 emissions at the ROXUL facility totaled less than a hundredth of a ton, during the company’s first year of operations there.

Lutz, an Eastern Panhandle Green Coalition member, alleged a DEP representative told him to “mind [his] own business” when he asked to see site air quality monitoring results in 2022. DEP officials present during the virtual meeting did not respond to that allegation during the meeting.

Mary Chatham, who said her family lives on a farm next to the ROCKWOOL plant, lamented what she said was an “ever-present cloud of emissions from the chimneys that billow over the fields.”

“We cannot analyze the safety of living next to this constant exhaust but can breathe what’s in the exhaust and are very concerned,” Chatham said. “So it’s really important for everyone that we have strong, adequate guidelines for monitoring, compliance and enforcement with this large corporation that knows how to maneuver [around] the law and get around anything they want to.”

Challenges to the permit

ROCKWOOL has appealed inclusion in the permit of a condition requiring building doors to remain closed except as necessary for people or material to enter the building. That appeal is still pending before the state Air Quality Board, a quasi-judicial review board that hears permit-related appeals, according to the DEP.

The Jefferson County Foundation, Inc., a community advocacy nonprofit, has challenged ROXUL facility permitting, requesting that Rockwell be required to reapply for a modified permit under Title 45, Series 14 in an appeal denied by the state Air Quality Board in February 2024.

Jefferson County Foundation representatives called for the DEP to tighten its permitting oversight during Tuesday evening’s meeting.

Christine Weimer of the foundation urged that the permit be reviewed through an “environmental justice lens” and said a colleague whose property adjoins ROCKWOOL’s suffered a skin allergy and upper respiratory problems that go away anytime he leaves his home.

In October 2023 comments submitted to the DEP’s Division of Air Quality, the foundation urged the DEP not to finalize draft modifications to the permit and to either:

• Make Rockwool seek modifications to the permit that update permit requirements to reflect major-source requirements for fueling with natural gas, or
• Repropose draft permit modifications with a record that provides detailed information confirming Rockwool’s emission reductions and changed status as a minor stationary source

ROCKWOOL’s shipping and receiving entrance at its stone
wool insulation manufacturing facility near Kearneysville,
Jefferson County, is shown here on July 21, 2024.

SEAN MCCALLISTER | Gazette-Mail

ROCKWOOL responds

ROCKWOOL public affairs manager Paul Espinosa, who is also a Republican member of the House of Delegates representing a Jefferson County district, said the company is using “best available control technology” as part of its emissions abatement.

“We are proud of our record of going beyond what is required by state and federal regulations to reduce emissions from our operations while providing well-paying jobs and significant economic benefits to the community,” Espinosa, House speaker pro tempore, said in an email.

West Virginia Manufacturers Association representative Joe Unger was the lone speaker who offered comments casting ROCKWOOL in a favorable light, calling the company a “valued member of the West Virginia manufacturing community.”

“[I]t is producing an environmentally beneficial product that is in great demand,” Unger said.

The DEP said processes at the facility that could cause air emissions include:

• Wool-spinning, curing, cooling and cutting
• Boilers and heaters
• Melting furnace
• Recycling plant
• Paved haul roads

The comment period is slated to end at 5 p.m. Aug. 2. The Division of Air Quality will evaluate and respond to comments and then send the proposed permit and response to comments to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. After EPA review of the proposed permit, and after any issues raised are addressed, the division will take action, a division representative said during the meeting.