Air Pollution Control District Plans to Revisit Permit Fees Soon

Louisville’s Air Pollution Control District is considering raising the fees industries pay for certain types of permits.Many of the fees companies pay to the Air Pollution Control District are based on the tons of various pollutants they emit every year. But as both technology advances and tightening federal regulations reduce air pollution, Louisville’s air is getting cleaner and the fees paid to the district are getting smaller.District Spokesman Tom Nord says that’s a ‘good news, bad news’ situation for the agency.“The good news is, it means pollution levels are dropping, which is our goal at the Air Pollution Control District,” he said. “The bad news is, if you base your fee structure on the amount of pollution people produce, you’ve got to find some way to make up that revenue somewhere.”Nord says to keep the programs sustainable, the district will have to change the way it levies fees.“So our plan is to right size our fee structure, so it’s still fair and still allows business to do business here but also recognizing that we had to make some changes in order to keep ourselves a self-sustaining operation,” he said.For example, Louisville's Strategic Toxic Air Reduction (STAR) program has been around for seven years, and the permit fees have never been raised. At the time of its implementation, the district only intended fees to account for 42 percent of the program's cost, but that's no longer feasible.Nord says just because there’s less pollution doesn’t mean it takes fewer agency resources to regulate the industries. The district plans to present a revised fee structure to its board for approval sometime in the next few months.