August 30, 2006
Great Lakes Regional Toxic
Air Emissions Inventory
Steering
Committee Conference Call Minutes
Participants
Illinois:
Indiana:
Michigan: Dennis
McGeen, Jim Lax and Allan Ostrander
Minnesota: Dan Steber
and Chun Yi Wu
New York: Carlos
Mancilla
Ohio: Tom Velalis
Ontario: Peter Wong
Pennsylvania: John Hulsberg
and Karen Gee
Wisconsin: Orlando Cabrera-Rivera
GLC: Jon Dettling
EPA:
Other: Mark Young
RAPIDS
Mark Young has done some additional work in charting
out the data flow for each state. His more recent priority has been working on
getting PostgreSQL running and in looking into the .Net versus Java issue. He
noted that many of the angles he's looked at suggest that .Net may be a better
solution from several aspects. Orlando
notes that their system, AEMS, will be converted to .NET from
PowerBuilder. A contact person from Wisconsin
working on the AEMS to .NRT migration will contact Mark to
discuss some of these issues. In particular, .Net seems to have some
useful database editing features that are native in the development platform,
which will assist in programming some of these tools. In addition,
the need to have the system in two platforms (SQLANYWHERE, and ORACLE)
will be eliminated. For the capabilities we need, .Net seems to be
preferable and Wisconsin
seems to have arrived at that conclusion also. Having another agency working
with similar code on a similar platform will be very useful. Tom mentioned that
their system is being converted to Java. Tom will find the contact information
for the people working on this.
Mark has been able to get PostgreSQL running on his
machine and can make all the necessary connections. He currently believes that
is will run adequately as a stand-alone database, so both the Oracle and
SQLanywhere functions in the current RAPIDS can be replaced with PostgreSQL,
which will greatly simplify the programming.
Carlos raised a question regarding Mark's familiarity
with AFS and the tools that were programmed to move data from AFS to RAPIDS.
Mark said he's somewhat familiar with AFS, although he didn't recall working
specifically with that tool. As the RAPIDS data format will likely be
undergoing some changes, such tools may not operate properly with the new
system.
Chun Yi also inquired about the compatibility with
MEER. This compatibility would also likely change if the RAPIDS data structure
changes. Chun Yi noted that she needs to be able to plan ahead for such issues
if conversion tools will need to be developed. Mark noted that it's very likely
that if a new database schema were adopted, a conversion tool from the current
to the new system would need to be developed to work around these and similar
issues.
Minnesota's
programs are still in Powerbuilder. Converting away from the current platform
may cause some issues for Minnesota
that would need to be explored. For example, she is currently converting point
source data from Delta to RAPIDS to NIF.
Carlos noted that the AFS-RAPIDS import tool is used
to import all point sources in a batch mode. Otherwise, they would need to be
added one at a time.
Orlando
mentioned that there is also the issue of compatibility with past years data.
Allan mentioned that his major problem has been with
speed and data loss issues in importing NIF data to RAPIDS.
Orlando
also noted that there is considerably more information in RAPIDS than in NIF.
There may be opportunities to simplify RAPIDS by eliminating items that are not
used. There may also be information that would need to be retained.
Allan gave an example of stream level emissions.
In Michigan,
there is really no need to have data at the stream level; process level would
be sufficient. Do other states require stream level data? Chun Yi noted that
her state has stream level information. However, Delta doesn't have this
information. When the data gets mapped to RAPIDS, the stream level data is
created. Mark noted that these are the type of complications the current RAPIDS
model introduces that he believes might be able to be avoided in a new version.
For the meeting at the end of the month, Mark will
prepare some materials for the team to review.
Mark is attempting to find someone at EPA to talk to
about their database structure and design.
Tom noted that he has a document that shows the QA/QC
criteria EPA uses with NEI. He will forward this to the group.
B(a)p Report
The MARAMA documentation was recently released and
several members of the group have been reviewing this. One major implication is
that there is now an emission factor for conventional fireplaces.
Michigan
has not yet looked at the report. Michigan
is looking into the commercial cooking data in NEI and investigating the issue
of residential waste burning in their state.
Minnesota
has updated their mobile source data to include b(a)p as was noted over email.
Chun Yi has looked at the MARAMA report and has contacted James Houck about the
new emission factors. James said that the literature review leading to the new
emission factors was fairly comprehensive. A few issues are that the data for
boilers do not have an assigned SCC and that there are many pollutants for
which the group currently has emission factors for these sources that are not
in this report.
Carlos mentioned that they have been considering
whether it is best to adjust their data with the NEI emissions factors or
whether to adopt the MARAMA inventory. Orlando
pointed out that there are some source types and emission factors that are not
in both, so there may be a possibility of combining them. Carlos also mentioned
that he will be getting the CARB crematory factor and using this to estimate
crematory emissions. Carlos noted that the burning of household waste is
prohibited throughout their state for all municipalities of more than 20,000
people. Carlos will look at the NEI data for this category as well.
Tom will look at the documentation.
Ontario
has looked at the document and is considering adopting several of the emission
factors.
Pennsylvania
has taken an initial look at the data and it appears much better than the
Pechan data they had previously rejected for these sources. However, they would
like to look into this further.
Wisconsin
will be using the conventional fireplace emission factor from MARAMA. Orlando has spoken with
someone at the CARB and they have an online emission factor database. They have
based their emission factors for PAH from crematories come from measurements at
a specific facility in San Francisco.
Although the EPA only included a PAH7 and PAH16 factor, the full report has
emission factors for individual PAH. There appear to be some errors, because
the PAH16 factor is less than the actual some of the individual PAHs. Orlando will send this
information following the call.
There will not be an additional call prior to the next
meeting, which will be Sept. 27-28 in Toronto.