Great Lakes Regional Toxic
Air Emissions Inventory
Steering
Committee Conference Call Minutes
November 22nd, 2006
Participants
Illinois: Buzz
Asselmeier
Indiana:
Michigan:
Minnesota: Chun Yi and
Dan Steber
New York: Carlos
Mancilla
Ohio:
Ontario: Cong Doan
Pennsylvania: John Hulsberg
and Karen Gee
Wisconsin: Orlando Cabrera-Rivera
GLC: Jon Dettling
EPA:
Other: Mark Young
RAPIDS Database
design update
Mark participated in an EPA call
about 2 weeks ago. The call referred to a design document that is informally
being referred to as "NIF 4.0." This document have some implications
for the group's database design work. At first glance, this looks like a fairly
wide deviation from the prior design. They are currently taking comments on
this and don't appear to have made any firm decisions. They are currently only
working on data elements and haven't really gotten to the design or interchange
stages. For example, the NIF3.0 hierarchy we have been discussing doesn't
really exist yet for "NIF4.0." There appear to be some opportunities
for us to share ideas with them as well. The people leading this sound as though
they are very open to input at this point.
Mark should be posting some updated design documents next
week and will post the EPA document also.
A remaining item from the last
call regarding the Access database that was posted and that contained some
relationship diagrams is the representation of control devices. In RAPIDS, each
control device is usually represented independently. In the NIF format, control
devices are usually represented as aggregate records. These records allow
multiple devices to be listed within that record, but only allow a single
aggregate number for control efficiency. Mark would like to get the group's
input as to whether the NEI approach is generally workable, or if something
similar to the current RAPIDS control records should be kept in
their place. Is there a desire to define control equipment at this greater
level of detail.
In Wisconsin, they have adopted the RAPIDS
model and therefore have the control data at this higher level of resolution.
However, this may not be necessary for estimation.
Mark mentioned that he
doesn’t see any restriction in the format preventing multiple control
records for a given pollutant from a given device. It's possible that this
wouldn’t cause any problems. The bigger issue is whether the group would
like to have the control efficiencies aggregated or not. Chun Yi stated that
with few people actually using RAPIDS, it may make sense to simply adopt the
EPA's format. Carlos noted that AFS has an "aggregate" function that
converts from multiple control records to a single efficiency.
In the NEI model, there
isn’t really a linear connection between originating devices and control
devices. This doesn't appear to cause any issues with the use of NEI for its
current purposes. Mark would like to ensure that people realize that if the
NEI's way of handling this is adopted, the old approach with the connectivities
between devices would be phased out.
Mark noted that there are some
important points to go over with the geographic representation, but this can be
done as part of the next call. Mark is hoping to get some ERD documents posted
for the group to look at and has been making some progress in getting a
database configured in Postgres. We will probably soon move onto a
consideration of individual data elements.
B(a)p Report
draft
A revised b(a)p report was posted
on the RAPIDS forum last week. This version includes a preliminary summary of
the data following the adjustments made by the states. Jon pointed out some of
the major changes since the last version, which included rearrangement of much
of the content and the inclusion of a section summarizing the final data. The
section that requires the most remaining work is the conclusions section.
Chun Yi pointed out that table 5
might be easier to interpret if sources were classified as point, area, etc.
The group agreed with this comment and Jon will make the change.
Chun Yi also raised a question
about non-incineration waste disposal emissions. After further review of his
spreadsheet, Jon discovered that a calculation error has caused this number to
increase in the final numbers. The actual number for these categories should be
less than 1 pound. Jon will make this correction and will file the
non-incineration waste disposal categories under "Other point
sources" as was done with the original data. This correction will cause a
decrease of about 1800 pounds in the final total emissions.
Several people commented on figure
5 and the text preceding it regarding relationships of population and
emissions. Chun Yi noted that it would be helpful to show such relationships
for various source classes, rather than or in addition to the total. Orlando pointed out that
we should caution readers from over-interpreting such a figure to imply that
population is the major determinant of b(a)p emissions. Jon agreed that this
section needs some more work if it is to be retained. Monitoring data have
shown a strong correlation to population and b(a)p concentrations. In the case
of emissions, it would be preferable to look at the relationship at the county,
rather than state-wide level, as population differences can be too averaged out
at the state-wide level. Jon has been attempting to query the database for this
information and is still working on it.
Orlando pointed out
that since metal production is such a large source category for b(a)p, it would
be worth while to include a discussion of coke oven gasses and how these are
treated differently by different states. Some states report emissions of coke
oven gasses as a mixture and others report the individual constituents rather
than the mixture. There may therefore be some addition b(a)p from this category
that is not being accounted for in the current methodology because it is
classified as coke oven gas.
It was also pointed out that
following the many discussions we've had on crematory emissions, these do not
represent a significant b(a)p source in the region once the methods and
emission factors that were arrived at are applied.
Area sources
discussion
The group discussed the table of
area source categories that Jon sent prior to the last call and the
observations he included in his email about the potential for estimating some
area source emissions at the regional level. Each state gave their impressions
on whether they though such an approach was feasible or if they preferred to
stay with the past approach of each state estimating their own. There was
unanimous support for keeping the current approach rather than attempting to do
estimations at the regional level. Among the comments people had were that
there may be too many inter-state differences to account for and that the
regional approach may not really reduce workload by very much. It was therefore
agreed to proceed with that approach for the 2005 inventory.
There was some discussion about
upcoming work to determine which area sources to estimate for the 2005
inventory and the possible need to update some methodologies. It was mentioned
that the group might make a decision with some categories to adopt the NEI
numbers for certain categories. In addition to updating methodologies that are
being used, there could also be additional efforts to increase consistency of
which emission factors are being used and which SCCs are being used to report
certain area source types. Some changes, such as reassigning SCCs, could be
done at the repository level in some cases.
Next Meeting
Jon has been attempting to contact
Suzanne about room availability. He left a message a few days ago and is
waiting to hear back from her. He will try to confirm a date with her and let
the group know within the next week so that people can submit travel requests.
Next Call
The next teleconferece will be
December 13th.