§ 63.175 Quality improvement program for valves.

(a) In Phase III, an owner or operator may elect to comply with one of the alternative quality improvement programs specified in paragraphs (d) and (e) of this section. The decision to use one of these alternative provisions to comply with the requirements of § 63.168(d)(1)(ii) of this subpart must be made during the first year of Phase III for existing process units and for new process units.

(b) An owner or operator of a process unit subject to the requirements of paragraph (d) or (e) of this section shall comply with those requirements until the process unit has fewer than 2 percent leaking valves, calculated as a rolling average of 2 consecutive quarters, as specified in § 63.168(e) of this subpart.

(c) After the process unit has fewer than 2 percent leaking valves, the owner or operator may elect to comply with the requirements in § 63.168 of this subpart, to continue to comply with the requirements in paragraph (e) (or (d), if appropriate) of this section, or comply with both the requirements in § 63.168 and § 63.175.

(1) If the owner or operator elects to continue the quality improvement program, the owner or operator is exempt from the requirements for performance trials as specified in paragraph (e)(6) of this section, or further progress as specified in paragraph (d)(4) of this section, as long as the process unit has fewer than 2 percent leaking valves calculated according to § 63.168(e).

(2) If the owner or operator elects to comply with both paragraph (e) of this section and § 63.168 of this subpart, he may also take advantage of the lower monitoring frequencies associated with lower leak rates in § 63.168 (d)(2), (d)(3), and (d)(4) of this subpart.

(3) If the owner or operator elects not to continue the quality improvement program, the program is no longer an option if the process unit again exceeds 2 percent leaking valves, and in such case, monthly monitoring will be required.

(d) The following requirements shall be met if an owner or operator elects to use a quality improvement program to demonstrate further progress:

(1) The owner or operator shall continue to comply with the requirements in § 63.168 of this subpart except each valve shall be monitored quarterly.

(2) The owner or operator shall collect the following data, and maintain records as required in § 63.181(h)(1) of this subpart, for each valve in each process unit subject to the quality improvement program:

(i) The maximum instrument reading observed in each monitoring observation before repair, the response factor for the stream if appropriate, the instrument model number, and date of the observation.

(ii) Whether the valve is in gas or light liquid service.

(iii) If a leak is detected, the repair methods used and the instrument readings after repair.

(3) The owner or operator shall continue to collect data on the valves as long as the process unit remains in the quality improvement program.

(4) The owner or operator must demonstrate progress in reducing the percent leaking valves each quarter the process unit is subject to the requirements of paragraph (d) of this section, except as provided in paragraphs (d)(4)(ii) and (d)(4)(iii) of this section.

(i) Demonstration of progress shall mean that for each quarter there is at least a 10-percent reduction in the percent leaking valves from the percent leaking valves determined for the preceding monitoring period. The percent leaking valves shall be calculated as a rolling average of two consecutive quarters of monitoring data. The percent reduction shall be calculated using the rolling average percent leaking valves, according to the following: