The governing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) voted almost unanimously to return a proposed amendment to the stationary source committee. The proposed amendment would require all new emergency generators to have a particulate filtration device installed, and the installation of the particulate filtration devices was a major concern to the health care sector.

At meetings regarding this issue, hospitals were defined as essential utility service providers and thus received a voluntary bypass exemption to utilize a pressure relief device to bypass the particulate filter during an emergency. This would be allowed if the particulate filtration device were to interfere (become clogged) during emergency generator operations. The bypass exemption was intended to mitigate any undue risk associated with the failure of the particulate filter, which could result in failure and interruption of the operation of the emergency generator under actual emergency conditions. This exemption was proposed by CHA/HASC and the Southern California Society for Healthcare Engineering, and accepted by SCAQMD to allow hospitals a failsafe device to keep them in business if the particulate filtration device were to become impaired during an actual emergency situation.

This recent decision moves hospitals one step closer to being exempted from this rule amendment.