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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 05/20/2004MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 281 N. COLLEGE AVE. May 20, 2004 For Reference: Linda Stanley, Chair 493-7225 Eric Hamrick, Council Liaison 226-4824 Sarah Fox, Staff Liaison 221-6312 Board Members Present Ken Moore, Linda Stanley, Katie Walters, Nancy York Board Members Absent Everett Bacon, Jim Dennison, John Long, Mandar Sunthankar, Cherie Trine Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Sarah Fox, Lucinda Smith, Liz Skelton Guests None The meeting was called to order at 5:49 p.m. Air Quality Plan Lucinda Smith handed out a memo and response regarding the Air Quality Plan. Lucinda also updated the board on the recent Council study session, and overviewed the current situation of the Air Quality Plan • York: In reading this, I thought there was a conflict between it and the very next... • Smith: Are you in the policy chapter or do you mean Appendix B? • York: The very next thing says, "update every 5 years". • Smith: I bet you mean Appendix B, which is the landscape table on page 2, second row down. You're right; I failed to change that last comment box. That is still wrong. • York: The next one below it says "frequent and regular". • Smith: Do you feel that is a conflict? • York: I'm very happy that it is more frequent than every 5 years. • Stanley: I thought that too. It seems like this one says "update this information twice every 5 years", and then the next one is "frequent and regular updates". 1 wonder, what is the difference? • Smith: The "frequent and regular" could refer to the information that is on the web and is updated as needed. • Stanley: So it's not really the indicators? • Smith: Right. It doesn't really say indicators in the air quality information. It could also pertain to the annual trend report, which we update every year. • Stanley: On table 4-2, policy AQ1-6 "measurement", did you change... Air Quality Advisory Board 6/ 16/2004 Page 2 of 10 • Smith: No I didn't. Thank you for catching that. The policy grayline and the one underneath it needs to be changed. I realized I haven't changed any of the policies in the table. There will be more that need to be changed. • Stanley: (Re: Population as VMT indicator) Is that partially because the City Plan is not about population, but density? • Smith: I don't remember that coming up. • Walters: Does that mean all the policies underneath that going to be removed? • Smith: No, just that principle is gone. • York: You know, it is a measure as far as the other alternatives. It does reflect on the other alternatives. Although I did notice alternatives were removed. • Smith: Are you talking about investment in alternative modes? • York: That the work to encourage alternative modes - I think population control vs. VMT does reflect the effectiveness of alternative modes. • Smith: I see what you are saying: it has to do with choice of mode, basically. • York: And if they are even there to choose. Because if it's not there... • Smith: Let's talk about the indicator of investment in alternative modes in a couple of minutes. • Stanley: (Re: AQAB's suggestion to note which pollutants are affected by policies) There are different sizes of X's; does that mean anything? • Smith: Yes, in my mind. We're looking at page 4-3. I think this needs a little work; I haven't brought it to staff, but this is the concept anyway. I had started out making a separate table with all the policies and it became too redundant. In this table, you have policies, associated strategies, and the relationship with the high -priority pollutants. Do you have any reaction to this? • Stanley: I think it is better than nothing. I know it is not perfect; on many of them, they are all checked. It is a good attempt. When you go to decide what strategies to use here, the priorities will be part of that. You'll look at which of these strategies will be most effective. It definitely clarifies it more for me. • York: There was that one email asking for this very thing in the comments. I think it will be beneficial to someone who wants to quickly reference it. • Smith: Would you be comfortable if there were any helpful improvements or comments from staff? I thought about putting high/medium/low instead of X's, but I thought that might be arbitrary. Maybe some comments or notes might be more meaningful in some cases. The concept is what I wanted to demonstrate here. • York: If there was a way to show the changes... • Smith: Do you mean level of effectiveness? • York: Yes. • Stanley: That could be so arbitrary. • Walters: It would be hard to put any quantification to that. • Stanley: It doesn't seem like something maybe when you are deciding on what tactics to use for a given strategy, or which ones would give us the biggest return. Maybe that is something that can be considered when you are delegating resources. • Smith: In relation to the budget development, I think that suggests to your work planning. We might be able to do that to a moderate extent. What we are talking about now relates to a question that council brought up about expressing a preference for setting some goals and seeing how the budget, or expenditure of resources relates to it. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/16/2004 Page 3 of 10 We are still talking that over at the staff level. I don't know that it would be beneficial. To set reasonable goals, you have to have a lot of information. You have to have an emissions inventory, and a good estimate of what some things are going to do. With many education and outreach activities, it is hard to quantify the benefits. Right now, we may try to tighten up the indicators, but respond to council that it would be too difficult to set goals. Instead, we should quantify the benefit of what we have done. • Stanley: And then reallocate based upon... • Smith: Yes. Because you can learn over time, when you try to quantify the benefits, how effective something some things are. But, that only applies to certain things, because, how would you quantify the benefit of a community readiness study? That is large-scale behavior changes. • Stanley: And it is so long-term as well. • Smith: Then there was the suggestion about indicators. For radon, you had wanted a specific indicator in the table. I feel like it is more appropriate to have it mentioned in the strategy section, where it is, that we'll develop an indicator for radon. Right now, for example, the only data that we have available for radon mitigation is on new homes. There is no reporting available for existing homes. • Stanley: That is probably where there is more of a concern. Because then you are just measuring how many new homes were built in Fort Collins. • Smith: Unless there is some testing program to evaluate the effectiveness of that. It is important, and we will work on it. But it's hard to identify exactly what the indicator is. If the radon ordinance passes, we can put in there: number of new homes mitigated. But what does that tell you? • Smith: For alternative mode investment; I did begin discussions with different staff and I think we can get somewhere with that. They were asking the question: What is the objective of identifying the investment. Because there is no policy saying that it should be this much investment proportional to other investments, or even that it will increase. It just says that the City will invest. I agree that it would be interesting to see what the investments are. Some other challenges with this are: how do you separate the capital cost that includes a road and a bike lane? Or, the bus travels over the road, and you need that road, so how do you separate that out? This gets into some of the issues that we ran into with the auto -subsidy study. Brian is looking at again, by the way. We hired a CSU grad student in economics to do this auto -subsidy study and we could never reach an agreement, even internally within the City, on how to allocate road related investment. I'm just saying there are some issues; I am interested on working on it. I am not able yet to say "we will measure that". We have plans to continue the discussions. Right now in the plan, the reference to this is in the sentence, "Add additional indicators as appropriate, like mobility, radon -risk, air toxics-risk and investment." • Stanley: Certainly, that should be an indicator in terms of the City Plan. I would hate to see you guys spend time on that. • Smith: This issue is broader than just our department. I'm pretty sure there is a going to be a specific effort to evaluate mobility measurement indicators. Part of the question will be, what, if anything, is the right trigger for transportation -related goals. This can be part of that discussion. But I think that this can be a separate discussion because there is that policy -basis: "the City will invest". If said a little bit more, it would give Air Quality Advisory Board 6/16/2004 Page 4 of 10 more of a basis for wanting to define it. This is something that you could recommend to Council that you think is important that be identified or looked at. • Stanley: Instead of being part of the Air Quality Plan, I'd rather have Mark Jackson come in and talk about the indicators they're going to use for the Transportation Plan. • Smith: We can note that: that the AQAB has interest in that process. • York: (Re: VMT vs. population being removed as an indicator) It was so good, because we could go before Council and say, "VMT is growing faster than..." • Smith: And that is still a critical issue for congestion. But they didn't accept it for the Air Quality Plan. • Smith: This next one, I believe Linda suggested wording for the ozone policy regarding municipal reduction that said, "will encourage and may regulate". The truth is we always could regulate with Council support, but I don't think it is something the City would be apt to regulate, because it is in the realm of individual residence choices. The other larger regulation for ozone is done at the state level. I wanted the policy to somewhat match what would happen. It used to say, "will encourage". Now it says "...will reduce by, for example, educating citizens and providing incentives." • Stanley: I like that it says "will reduce" now. Does Southern California have regulations on residential... like, "you can't spill your gas can"? • Walters: They have a statewide regulation on gas cans. • Smith: On the use of private gas cans, for lawn mowing? • Walters: Yes, like the ones we were handing out; they're not allowed to sell anything but those in the stores. That's a statewide regulation that they've chosen to do, however, our state won't do that. Our goal is not to regulate further than Federal and Federal has no regulation. Even if we decided as a City that we needed to control that stuff; I don't think we could regulate. • Smith: Ok, the next one is "include some reference to diesel emissions and recommending a diesel task force. I do support the idea of a diesel task force. John Stokes pointed out that maybe that is jumping the gun and we need to take a look at our whole air -toxic situation and see what emerges as the priority. My guess is it will be diesel. I think he felt some anxiety about the task force aspect of it. The way it is now is, (Page 4-6) "Study EPA's community air toxics assessment and risk -reduction strategies database for approaches used in other communities, including diesel particulates, and develop and implement solutions if air toxics issues exist." We're calling out diesel as an issue in that way. The State of Colorado has a diesel task force and have recommended voluntary measures for fleets that have to do with promoting technologies to reduce diesel emissions while idling, practices and fuels. I think we could learn a lot from them and move in that direction. • Smith: The last one was "a requirement to remove non -certified wood stoves if woodsmoke emissions continue to rise". My response is that it is appropriate to look at regulation, but we'd have to go through an evaluation process, gather data, and go to Council. The strategy says "consider", and maybe we can say "evaluate" if you think that is a stronger word. It is appropriate to move to that, but we can't just say in the plan that we will do it. • York: I like the word evaluate. You know... the one email from the fellow specifically about woodsmoke and chimineas. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/16/2004 Page 5 of 10 • Smith: I think that is a growing issue. They are for sale in all those stores. People use those and it is purely unregulated emissions. • York: There might be some education that we could do. • Fox: Usually this time of year we start rolling out articles in the paper. • Stanley: County does letters to the editor. Then there would be peer pressure. Those are excellent letters for people to see that other people feel this way. Whereas if it is from the City, it is more "Oh, they're telling me what to do again." • Moore: If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Bring your recommendations to the table. • Smith: There are also more traditional avenues to get the information out. We don't have the Environmental Newsletter anymore... • Stanley: Can you speak to that? That surprised me. Was it a budget cut, or that nobody reads it? • Smith: John Stokes sought input from staff and other people. He was questioning how much good it was doing for the resources spent. He is still encouraging us to get the message out strongly; even using Channel 27 with just the slides. He felt it wasn't as useful as the resources that went into it. • Stanley: I was wondering about it — If it's expensive than it's probably true. • Smith: We used to share cost of producing that with Utilities, and they were not able to continue with it. • Stanley: Speaking about Channel 27, what about putting something on there about the chimineas? • Fox: That would be a great showcase. • York: I don't know how many people look at Channel 27. • Stnley: I'm surprised how many people have mentioned they do. • Smith: It's worth it, especially if it's free. You can't lose. • Walters: Part of this is public outreach. People don't know about the hotlines. • Smith: That's half battle: getting people to know about it and actually comment on things. • Smith: Do you have comments on the Plan, or anything? • York: I made a little note on page 5, about "health protection". 1 have "inform, educate public?" (AQ-15 Principle). • Stanley: Wouldn't that be more part of the strategy? • York: It should be part of the principle. When it's recognized that there is a high level of danger, to inform the public. • Stanley: You mean in terms of when there is a bad day? Are you speaking specifically of Red/Blue days? Or are you speaking generally? • York: It was a thought... "strive to protect and improve the air so it wouldn't harm human health". So, if there is a harm to human health, to educate and inform about it. That was my thought. • Smith: Would that fit under indoor... • Fox: That is sort of the purpose of 15.1 — partnerships. That, the City, within its ability, will work on those relationships. If there was a strong partnership — it would be great to have those partnership organizations, or health professionals or whoever they are being the ones who as health professionals are sending out the alert on an unhealthy day. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/16/2004 Page 6 of 10 • York: What we have now, as far as the air quality, I don't find it particularly helpful. • Walters: I've seen the one in Denver. The problem is: So we have really bad air; what do we do? • Moore: We have a red air day, but I still have to drive to work. • Walters: People may be afraid to drive or ride on bad days. I don't know how would it affect people. • Smith: Part of the issue is: are there critical gaps not being covered? My idea is the City is not going to take on that role on make announcements or pronouncements about health related things, unless they rise to a critical level like second hand smoke or radon. The air toxics work might allow those to elevate, and if so, then we'd be working on them. For ambient air pollution measurements, the City is going to be receiving high ozone alerts. It turns out that the whole ozone non -attainment deferred area will be following the same high -ozone forecast during the summer that Denver follows. Right now, we're going through this discussion about who should send out the announcements. What we are coming to is Larimer County and Weld County, because they are the health departments, are going to coordinate outreach and we as the City will help disseminate the message. It will be a two prong message: one is, "the ozone is going to be high tomorrow, it might be in this range and have these health impacts" and the other part of the message is what you can do. Even in that case, we are having the County, our health department, be the lead. • York: I'm glad Cherie isn't here. • Smith: Well, the County is not forecasting the days, Denver is forecasting the days. There was a lot of discussion about: is it more valuable to have separate forecasts that might be more accurate for each area or would that be too confusing? Generally, everyone thinks it would be too confusing. It's pretty much the same here as in Denver. • Walters: That's where health partnerships come into play. If we aren't cooperating with Larimer County, that is where the City roles come in. • Smith: Right, we certainly are. We are trying to coordinate, for example, an announcement in the Coloradoan. We also are developing a general ozone campaign. • Stanley: I don't think there is anything that precludes what you are saying. In terms of the principles/policies, now you do have some mechanism by which you can at least start talking about health effects. Maybe the best way to get that out there is not in an announcement, but on a lot of education. For example with the air toxics, we don't have a way to measure those, right? Those could be the things that are really hurting us. One place to get that information is the Web Cam. Maybe that could be publicized better. It could be on channel 27; we could show pictures one minute before the hour every hour. • York: What about the days that we get NA's? • Smith: I will check on it. It could be calibration or humidity. • Stanley: Oh, that's the one in the Coloradoan. • Smith: It is from the State's transmissometer in Fort Collins. It goes through Brian's computer, goes through some preliminary QA and then goes to the Coloradoan. If there is any problem, it won't be transmitted. If the humidity is over 70%, they don't report it. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/ 16/2004 Page 7 of 10 • Stanley: As far as I know, people don't know that is on the back page of the newspaper. That's why Channel 27, getting a nice graph on there would be good. Or, a radio station like KRFC. Some way that people will actually get it. • York: They've gone from a graph to numbers now. • Walters: Like indexes. That's so meaningless to some people • York: Now you have to actually read it and look at the little scale. • Smith: They normalize it all relative to the standard. So, 100 equals the standard. • Moore: I'm surprised radio stations don't do more public service announcements. • Walters: Maybe we could start with radio stations, and see how that goes. • York: What will they say when visibility is NA? • Fox: We can say that "we can't tell today because humidity is too high". • York: I have question — in the City Plan, do we have something talking about promoting alternative modes of transportation? • Smith Yes, and it's actually repeated in ours on pages 3-7 & 3-8. It repeats all the alternate mode key principles and policies verbatim. • York: Reading the changes, it seems like anything related to automobiles were being scratched out. • Smith The recent changes? Are you looking at attachment A? • York: Environment... • Smith: They were scratched, but replaced by many other things. The only thing really lost is the VMT vs. population. • Stanley: This was the City Plan chapter... Environment. • I put it in there for people to see what the Air Quality Policies looked like intact before, and what was adopted by City Plan this time. Attachment A shows both those things. They do show up in our plan. • Stanley: They took all that out of the City Plan and referred to it in the Air Quality Plan. • Smith: It's been revised a little bit. The concepts are there. • Stanley: A lot of it is written much cleaner, I think. • York: The other thing is AQ15.4... Indoor... • Smith: OK, that's the last health one. • York: The reason I don't like "the majority of air pollution is indoor", is I don't want people to think outdoor pollution is something to sneeze at. I tried to make a word change, but it doesn't seem to be working: "Because of the seriousness of indoor...". Not to minimize the seriousness of outdoor air pollution. • Stanley: You could say, "Because significant air pollution exposure occurs indoors". I may take away some of the preciseness. • Smith: It also implies that it's always bad inside. • Stanley: I know what you mean when it says "majority". Does that mean we don't have to worry about the outdoors still? • York: People think what they have indoors is good. • Smith: We could consider taking out that preface clause altogether. • Stanley: I'm torn on it. Because, I can see it from both ways. • York: People do know that outdoor pollution is bad • Stanley: Maybe people won't read it that close. Do you want to make any recommendation? Air Quality Advisory Board 6/16/2004 Page 8 of 10 • York: I had "because of the seriousness of indoor pollution" but I stopped because it didn't make sense. It didn't go with the rest of the sentence. • Walters: Why? • Stanley: Oh, "Because indoor air pollution can be a serious issue, the City will take action..."? • Smith: It's hard to know if it makes a difference. I understand your point. • York: How about "Because of the seriousness of indoor air pollution exposure occurring indoors..." • Stanley: No, that's worse than before. • Walters: What you had before makes sense. • Smith: "Because of the seriousness of indoor air pollution exposure..." sounds too confusing. • York: It doesn't have the comparison. This is the majority, so something must be the minority. • Smith: But, I think that's a true fact, for people. It doesn't mean that outdoor air quality isn't important and it doesn't affect people's health. • Stanley: It's funny to have a phrase there at beginning when we don't anywhere else. • Smith: That came from you all, at the subcommittee. How about this: "Because indoor air pollution can be a serious issue or problem, the City will take action..." • York: That sounds fine. • Walters: We don't want to compare it, because it is its own thing. There's indoor and there is outdoor. • Smith: Does the board want to see that change? "Because indoor air pollution can be a serious issue, the City will take actions to reduce resident's exposure to indoor air pollution..." • York: Read it again? • Smith: "Because indoor air pollution can be a serious issue, the City will take actions to reduce resident's exposure..." • Walters: I think that's a better way to say it because indoor air quality can vary from place to place. For us to say everyone will get a majority of their pollution from indoor air quality is not true. • Smith That's a very good point. It would be really great to have a recommendation from the board. • Stanley: Can we do it by email? • Smith: It goes to Council July 6`h. • Stanley: We could do it in June. • Walters: Can we come up with a statement and not vote on it now? We can email to everybody and get their viewpoint. • Fox: We are meeting June 17`h. • Stanley: We could have Katie draft a motion. • York: We should also recommend approving the Air Quality Plan. • Walters: Right, approve with this one modification. • Smith: Council will be taking action just on policy, but you can make a statement about the plan if you want. • York: You were looking for a recommendation on the policies? Air Quality Advisory Board 6/16/2004 Page 9 of 10 • Smith: Yes. I think there is value in communicating if you think the plan is on track or not. • York: Can we say "except the VMT vs. population..."? • Smith: You can say whatever you want, really. • Stanley: I'm not suggesting we don't say it, but we wrote two memos already, and said that twice. One was just dealing with that. • York: Are we doing an air quality survey every two years? • Smith Yes, it's planned for fall of this year. • York: Will we get to weigh in on the survey questions? • Smith: I know one was to ask if people know how much it costs per mile to build a road. Is that right? • York: That's something I talk about. • Fox: We are redoing the survey. • Smith: We can come to the board and seek your comments. We are going through the process to look at it before we send it out. It will not be exact same survey. • York: One thing is how people get information — with a newspaper is it article or advertisement. There were some questions asked in an earlier survey about people's willingness to change their driving habits. It would be nice to have a measure for the change over time; to have that consistency between the two. Climate Wise Program Sarah Fox updated the board on the current situation of the Climate Wise program. • York: Could somebody who wanted in, just volunteer to be in, even if it is a small business? • Fox: Yes, any size is welcome. Sandy should have the draft of the internal business plan and marketing plan done June lst. • Stanley: Maybe we can see that? • Fox: It talks about how we will decide who comes in. That will be outlined better. • York: Would you be overwhelmed if two dozen businesses came in? • Fox: Sandy would be. It takes a lot of time. That's part of what we talked about with the levels. Maybe we don't do the extensive assessment walkthroughs with everyone, just people who want to move up a level. Some businesses don't come in unless they get that initial walk through. • Walters: Maybe something can be done initially, and then only when they want to upgrade. • Stanley: Maybe you could use your partners to help recruit other businesses. • York: Did I hear that wind power price was down? • Fox: It is only 2%2 cents more. We mostly talk about costs savings, but it is greenhouse reductions. We don't have problems getting businesses. It's nice to be doing all this now, while we're not in a slump. We're doing fine, the program successful, and now is the time to be more strategic about it. • Stanley: Is it difficult to get additional permanent funding? • Fox: It has been grant funded. Whenever you add a grant, you add grant management. • Stanley: Being on economic vitality-sustainability board; I brought this up as one of strategies to help with economic vitality and sustainability. I wanted to increase the resources going to this program. I didn't get anywhere with it. This is one that I'm Air Quality Advisory Board 6/16/2004 Page 10 of 10 surprised our Council members haven't been a champion on. It's voluntary, it saves businesses money and in the long run it is good for the economy. • York: There are people who don't understand sustainability. • Walters: It's hard to define and pinpoint what it means. It's different for every community. • Fox: It's a great program and Council supports it. We've been able to find funding so far. • Stanley: But if you were not successful? • Fox: Our hope is having a business plan, the annual report, cost -benefit and case studies, would sell it. Coming with that and saying let's put the money and staff to it. • Walters: Adding water quantification is great, but we could add so much more. • Fox: We do partner meetings with a specific topic, and the business in our focus group said they want more of a networking opportunity. • York: Is there any way that they would take a small percentage of their savings and fund us? • Fox: Judy Doresy is helping with the business plan, and one of the pieces she talked about what type of resources to have and what ones we need. One thing she talked about was a membership fee and what it would go for. We mentioned it to Greg Byrne and he was nervous. I think there might be some clever ways to do it. • York: Maybe the large, well-heeled business might help sponsor sustainability workshops. • Stanley: There is a business sustainability class now offered at CSU. The professor was talking about trying to bring in one big speaker each semester. That could be done in conjunction with the City. Denver is offering certification in green building through CSU. • Fox: One thing that is starting June 8th for the next 6 months: we are piloting environmental business lecture series. They will be from 9:00-11:00 AM on Tuesdays once or twice a month. I'll make sure a brochure is in your packet. There are things like Climate Wise, water use, energy, air conditioning, and any environmental topic. Our idea is to do it for six months and see if people are coming. If there is a response, maybe we can expand. Margit will bring in Ed Cobato, sustainability guy from California, he will speak in August. He will also speak to City staff. • York: Get it on the calendars on KRFC and the Coloradoan. Maybe do a poster. • Fox: It will be stuffed inutility bills as well. Stanley: I will contact the new CSU business school dean. Maybe they can partner on us with this. Meeting adjourned 7.33 PM Submitted by Liz Skelton Administrative Secretary I 0 00� ' ���