EGR is the spawn of the devil. Recirculating the working mass of an air pump is inherently stupid and inefficient by its very nature. I'd remove the egr valve, plug the vac line, and drill-pipe tap-pipe plug the two ports. I think 1/4npt would work, but measure the holes. A true obsessive would also take off the intake and drill/tap/plug the egr source passage at the flange surface to avoid some manifold heating, but such a maniac would have already plugged the manifold water jacket, too...

If you have a leaky egr valve diaphragm, hose plugging might not be enough...