ILLINOIS POLLUTION CONTROL BOARD

September

8,

1988

NATURAL GAS PIPELINE COMPANY

OF AMERICA,

Petitioner,

v.

)

PCB 87—150

ILLINOIS ENVIRONMENTAL

PROTECTION AGENCY,

Respondent.

ORDER OF THE BOARD (by

B.

Forcade):

On September 1,

1988, Natural Gas Pipeline Company of

America (“Natural”)

filed

a “Supplemental Brief and Request for

Hearing”.

That document requests

a hearing and states,

“In

addition, Natural hereby withdraws the General Waiver

of Decision

filed October

8,

1987, and requests

a hearing within the

statutory time frames established by 35

Ill. Adm. Code

103.125”.

Also,

on September 7,

1988,

the Illinois Environmental

Protection Agency filed

a response to request for hearing.

Natural’s request for

a hearing

is moot.

First,

this permit

appeal

is governed by Section 40

of the Environmental Protection

Act

(“Act”), which mandates that

a hearing be held.

Second, by

Order

of October 15, 1987,

this Board specifically required that

a hearing be held

in this matter.

Since hearing must be held as

a matter of statutory law, as well as prior Board Order,

Natural’s request

is moot.

The more troubling

issue

is Natural’s attempt to withdraw

the General Waiver

of Decision Deadline.

The Board will

not

allow the general waiver of decision deadline

to be withdrawn.

The Board will however construe that request as

a motion for

expedited consideration and will make every attempt to promptly

schedule hearing and dispose of this matter.

The hearing officer

is directed to promptly enter

a scheduling order, consistent with

the requirement of the Board’s October

15, 1987 Order,

that will

ensure completion of the hearing and all briefs not later than

November

30, 1988.

The Act sets very stringent

time deadlines

for the

disposition of certain matters.

Failure of the Board to decide

the matter within that timeframe may result

in a default victory

by the petitioner

regardless of the environmental consequences

that might follow.

As

a

result, the Board takes time deadline

proceedings very,

very seriously and monitors their progress

92—59

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—2—

quite closely.

Each document

in a time deadline proceeding

is

examined when it is filed to determine what impact it might have

on the decision deadline.

Where the petitioner has filed an open

waiver

of decision deadline, each document

is not

so examined.

It is possible

in such cases that

a withdrawal of general waiver

would go unnoticed until there was no longer time to schedule and

hold the requisite activities, and

a default would result.

This

possibility

is greater where, as here,

the “withdrawal”

is only

contained within the text of an eleven page document, but the

document is captioned “Supplemental Brief”.

Natural provided an unqualified general waiver of decision

deadline on October 9,1987.

That waiver was specifically

repeated

in the filing of October 21,1987.

The Board will not

allow that general waiver

to be withdrawn.

IT

IS SO ORDERED

I, Dorothy M. Gunn,

Clerk

of the Illinois Pollution Control

Board, hereby certify

t

at the above Order was adopted on

the

______

day of ________________________,

1988,

by a vote

of

7-e’

•

Ill

s Pol

on Control Board

92—60