Great Lakes Regional Toxic
Air Emissions Inventory
Steering
Committee Conference Call Minutes
November 8th, 2006
Participants
Illinois: Buzz
Asselmeier
Indiana:
Michigan: Dennis
McGeen, Jim Lax and Allan Ostrander
Minnesota: Chun Yi and
Dan Steber
New York: Carlos
Mancilla
Ohio: Tom Velalis
Ontario: Cong Doan
Pennsylvania: John Hulsberg
and Karen Gee
Wisconsin: Orlando Cabrera-Rivera
GLC: Jon Dettling
EPA:
Other: Mark Young
RAPIDS Design
Diagram
Following the last call, Mark
Young posted an MS Access file that represented a design concept for a new
database structure. Chun Yi sent some initial comments.
The current RAPIDS data model has
a source-device-process-stream structure, whereas this new design follows more
closely the design of the NEI. The hierarchy used is essentially that which
Mark presented during the Toronto
meeting, which is based on the NEI hierarchy. In the new model, devices are
analogous to emission units. For each process, there are both throughputs and
emissions. This eliminates the stream table and both of these are essentially
child records of the device records.
Orlando inquired
whether the current data model has the connections records used previously.
Mark replied that there is an entity within one of the tables called
"configuration structures" that is intended to describe how various
entities are connected.
For example, a source can have
multiple stacks, but only if it has multiple processes assigned to it. Each
process can have a stack assigned. Therefore, if an emission unit has multiple
processes, they can be given multiple stacks. However, a single emission unit
cannot have multiple stacks if there are not multiple processes.
There was some discussion of the
start and end date records. Generally, the start and end dates for records in
the past have been the beginning and end of the year. There may be some
exceptions to this in the future, such as seasonal emissions or attempts to do
daily emissions. New York
uses some seasonal adjustments, such as with surface coatings. People generally
agreed that it would be preferable to have the ability to have start and end
dates that differ from the beginning and end of years. Chun Yi mentioned that
the current RAPIDS will default the date and time values are defaulted if
nothing is entered. Orlando
mentioned that some of his current work involves using seasonal emission
periods.
Mark asked if there was anyone who
currently sees a need to have an ability to specify time of day. Carlos replied
that he didn't feel they were.
Mark discussed that he has been
considering whether the emission period can be used as the way to associate
emissions to throughputs. Currently, all throughputs and emissions have start
and end dates in RAPIDS because they are activity records and this is required
in those records. Part of Mark's concern is finding a way to ensure that the
timeframes are consistent between throughput and emissions. If the dates and
times are stored separately for each, the protocols for how this information is input and
stored can lead to some inconsistencies.
John Hulsberg bought up the
importance of being able to enter site level emissions that aren't associated
with any throughput. This comes into play when facilities consider their
throughputs to be confidential. Tom expressed that confidential information
should be kept within each state and not exported to RAPIDS when states submit
data. It was agreed that there is a requirement to be able to mark throughputs
confidential. Chun Yi noted that there are other items that companies may want
to have marked confidential, such as SCCs or process descriptions. Chun Yi
suggested having a confidential field within the source field. Mark noted that
if this was done, there would need to be some sort of protocol within the
system for how the confidentially marked sources get handled when data is being
exported. Chun Yi expressed that if a source is marked as confidential, the
only information that should be exported for that source is the source-level
emissions.
Mark reiterated that the current structure
eliminates the stream level emissions and all emissions would occur at the
process level. Both emissions and throughput would have their own tables,
rather than being part of the activity table. By associating emissions directly
with processes and sources, emissions information should be quickly accessible
on both of these levels.
Mark asked whether there was a
desire to have emissions associated with control devices; that is, would
it be desired to be able to back-track from emissions to see which control
devices were used in estimating them.
John Hulsberg inquired how people
have been dealing with estimating controlled emissions with the general lack of
controlled factors in FIRE. Orlando
explained that RAPIDS
typically uses the uncontrolled factors and then applied a control efficiency.
Chun Yi stated that in the current
structure, the activities table contains both the controlled and uncontrolled
emissions. In the new structure, just the final emissions would be shown,
unless changes are made to allow us to do otherwise. Tom questioned why it
would be desired to show the uncontrolled emissions. Orlando noted that the NEI required that
states specify whether emissions are controlled or uncontrolled. Tom mentioned
that the "control status" field is one of the items that has been
mentioned as possibly being removed in future NEI versions. In the new system,
without the streams, it may not be necessary to retain the control information
with the ultimate emission records.
Currently in the NEI, the control
table has the device and pollutant information and has the control and capture
efficiency. This is where the control devices are defined. Orlando raised a question regarding how
control efficiencies are stored and used for cases, such as arsenic, where
controls might exist on PM emissions and there might also be control
efficiencies for the particular pollutant. Mark mentioned that having the
control information retained with the emissions is not cumbersome in terms of
the programming or the calculations in the system. It will add some to the
storage demands of the files, but not very significantly.
Mark discussed that in the future
he will begin doing Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) to show the database
design, perhaps with some excel files accompanying them. The Access file will
begin getting unwieldy rather quickly.
Generally, the NEI has far less
information on relationships and some of this will need to be improved in order
to provide some of the desired RAPIDS functionality. In the current RAPIDS,
relationships are very well defined. There is a need to have a balance between
these two. Chun Yi mentioned that there is a conference call tomorrow with EPA
Region 5 that will discuss NEI modifications. Chun Yi will check on whether its
appropriate to have Mark joint this call. Mark will continue working to find
the best balance of the positive features of the current RAPIDS and the NEI to
meet the group's needs. With the data model, there is some flexibility in how
data is stored within it, so some changes can be accommodated just by changing
the data storage protocol, rather than changes to the data structure.
Mark went through the issues
raised by Chun Yi in her email. The first comment regards the
"rap_inventories" table, which is the top-level table defining the
basic information about each inventory. This is the additional level that would
potentially allow multiple inventories. Chun Yi's question is whether is allows
only multiple year's inventories, or whether it allows separation of, for
example, CAP and HAP inventory. When submitting to EPA, a state can specify
whether the inventory is CAP, HAP or both together. This is in reference to the
inventory type field. Chun Yi feels that this information should not be at the
inventory level, because it may be desired to have CAP and HAP emissions in a
single inventory. Chun Yi felt that much of the information in this table that
defines the inventory does not belong at the same level as the inventory year.
The second comment refers to the
SOURCE_SUB_TYPE field in rap_sources. Mark had proposed having four major
source types of point, area, nonroad and mobile. Biogenic would be another
possibility. Chun Yi inquired whether sub-types like POTWs, landfills, and
airports could be added also. Chun Yi's point is that reporting for some
of these source types are reported in the point source format, but are other
types of sources (area or nonroad). Tom added that for many of these
categories, EPA is urging the states to report these in point source format.
For example, dry cleaners could be listed by identifying all the locations of
these facilities within the state. Chun Yi discussed that she currently often
has to alter the source type field within RAPIDS in order to alter how the data
is exported to NIF (point or area format). Because the reporting type is not
always strictly defined by the source type, there will need to be some
consideration given in designing the export utility to a way to provide some
flexibility in this.
Chun Yi's fourth comment concerned
how one deals with a single process that has multiple control devices. Mark
stated that there is a choice in how we design this part. There is an option to
either use an aggregate record for each process that includes multiple control
devices as multiple fields. There is also an option to have multiple control
records, one for each device.
Questions 3, 5, and 6 can be
discussed at a later time.
Benzo(a)pyrene
For the most part, the
benzo(a)pyrene updates have been submitted. There are still a few states who
are working on some issues in getting their data into the repository. For these
states, Jon has gotten a summary of the updates and has been able to use that
to fill in missing data within the report. Jon should be able to get a revised
draft report completed and sent to the group within the next 1-2 weeks for
review. Jon will follow up with Karen in Pennsylvania
to see whether they have any additional updates to include.
MDI
Based on the discussion on the
last call, Jon emailed the API industry rep, Dennis, regarding the MDI issue.
This item is essentially just waiting for a response from API as to whether
they want to move forward in doing this work or not. If there is no response in
the next several days, Jon will try to follow up with them. John Hulsberg noted
that he and Karen Gee had some questions they had wanted to ask Ann Pope
regarding the NEI's MDI emissions for Pennsylvania.
The architectural coating emissions of MDI for their state in the NEI are
inexplicably high and Pennsylvania
has not figured out the rationale for that.
Area Sources
As there is little time, this
issue will be put off until the next call. Jon sent a revision to his
area-source spreadsheet recently. Chun Yi mentioned that she thinks the traffic
marking and pesticide usage SCCs may be classified in this table as part of the
solvent usage categories.
Next In-Person
Meeting
The group agreed that Chicago would work best
for the next meeting. Jon will check with Suzanne to see which dates are
available for a room at the end of January and first two weeks in February.
Next Call
The next call will be on
Wednesday, Nov. 22 - 2pm Eastern