Boiler plant operating permit fee consultation: Feedback summary
The following report summarizes the feedback received from March 19 through May 3, 2019, through Technical Safety BC's consultation on fees proposed for boiler plant operating permits.
Report date: July 4, 2019
Read the verbatim feedback submitted through the consultation
Out of 329 companies reached, 26 (or 8%), gave feedback on the proposed fees. The majority of participating organizations were from the following industries:
- 4 schools and educational facilities
- 3 forestry
- 3 food and beverage
- 13 Chief Engineers
- 7 owners or managers of plants
- 5 governmental agencies
- 3 maintenance managers
- 7 Northern BC (Prince George and farther north)
- 6 Vancouver Island, Gulf Islands, and Sunshine Coast
- 4 Lower Mainland and Coast Mountains
- 4 Thompson Okanagan
The numbers of respondents and the percentages tabulated below for the responses account for two respondents who provided feedback through more than one channel.
Out of 18 participants who responded to this question on the feedback form, 16 agreed that charging different fees based on the plant class was reasonable.
When asked whether the fees for obtaining the operating permits should be the same as renewing permits, 18 feedback form respondents provided a response:
- 13 thought renewals should be lower than the initial operating permit
- 5 thought that it was reasonable to have both fees be the same
- 0 thought the renewals should be higher than the initial operating permit
Overall, when asked how reasonable they found the proposed fees, 19 feedback form respondents provided a response:
- 11 reasonable
- 3 somewhat reasonable
- 1 neutral
- 1 somewhat unreasonable
- 2 unreasonable
- 1 unsure
- 2 reasonable
- 1 somewhat reasonable
- 2 somewhat unreasonable
- 2 unreasonable
The most frequent comments received related to:
- Positive:The proposed fees for plants are reasonable and can be used responsibly for improving the plant operating permit program and other boiler technology-related initiatives.
- Negative:It is not clear what value is received for the fees paid, particularly because individual units already have permits. Smaller industries may be more impacted because they may have less funding, have a single boiler unit that needs to be registered as a plant, or not enough expertise to gather the information needed for plant registration.
- Suggestions: Create a searchable database of power engineers.