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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 06/08/2004MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 281 N. COLLEGE AVE. June 8, 2004 For Reference: Linda Stanley, Chair 493-7225 Eric Hamrick, Council Liaison 226-4824 Lucinda Smith, Staff Liaison 224-6085 Board Members Present Jim Dennison, Ken Moore, Linda Stanley, Mandar Sunthankar, Katie Walters, Nancy York Board Members Absent Everett Bacon, John Long, Cherie Trine Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Lucinda Smith, Liz Skelton Guests Eric Levine The meeting was called to order at 5:58 p.m. Minutes With no changes, the minutes of the March 18 and April 22, of 2004 meetings were unanimously approved. West Nile Task Force Nancy York updated the board on the activities of the West Nile Task Force. The West Nile Task Force will be reconvened because the County has adopted triggers for adulticide spraying. • York: The task force will be reconvening on next Thursday. • Sunthankar: What are the policies about spraying? • York: We were going to do applying of larvicide, but we don't have the money. They use four triggers. I spoke with Eric Levine on one trigger. They are looking at the mosquito traps and the ratio of infected mosquitoes. A ratio of 7+ means they will spray. I'll know more after the meeting. • Walters: Maybe the next AQAB meeting, we can get an update. Officer Election The board discussed and voted on a Chair and Vice -Chair for the board. • Stanley: Katie and I said we were willing to serve in our current capacities. I'll leave it up to you guys. • Dennison: Katie, you don't want to be chair? • Walters: I'm worried about the time commitment with commuting. • Dennison: I think it's OK the way it is. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 2 of 13 Ken Moore made the following motion: I nominate the current officers to their current positions. The motion passed unanimously. Air Quality Policies The board discussed possible recommendations for the Air Quality Policy going to Council on June 15, 2004 • Stanley: We discussed this last meeting in detail. Lucinda was open to our edits. • Smith: There weren't many and I made the changes requested. Is there anyone here who didn't get the handouts related to the plan? One was summary of the Council study session. Also, there was memo that was the response by staff to the AQAB memo for the study session. • Stanley: The key would be whether Jim or Mandar would have things they would like to discuss. The biggest thing to change since April was that you (Lucinda) got direction to take the VMT principle out. • York: But it's in the Transportation Plan? • Smith: That issue of bringing VMT to population growth rate is out of the transportation principle totally. • York: They deem it a losing proposition. • Smith: They weren't sure that it directly relates to air quality. It's certainly an important metric for congestion. They were questioning whether it should be there as a vision. The projections in the long tern show that on -road motor vehicle emissions will go down. • York: On this "A.3.3 Motor Vehicle Emissions Appendix page A-21". It looks to me like the CO... • Stanley: It shows up from 2015. • Smith: Well, it's down from 2004 & 2006. • Walters: The increase is probably due to more people and not cars. • Smith: Somebody from LSA Associates came and made a presentation to the board about their model of projection of emissions. I think that was part of Council's thinking. Some felt it was reasonable as a "measurement", but not as a vision. • Stanley: I wouldn't mind referring back to our old memos when I write the memo. I can see the point, but the comparison is useful, just to show how vehicle miles traveled is changing due to population growth vs. other things. Maybe it doesn't say anything about air quality, but it certainly does for congestion. • York: It is a metric we've been keeping. • Smith: There isn't anything that precludes somebody from drawing that comparison. As long as VMT is calculated, we'll always know what population is. It just will not be stated in the City Plan as a vision anymore. • York: It seems reasonable that in time it will go down. Our use of oil is too expensive. • Sunthankar: In terms of population level, the level of emissions has not increased per car. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 3 of 13 • Smith: One of them was grams per mile. The other one was a total. Cars will be cleaner, in general, and that is a predicted trend. One thing left out of that consideration is that with more miles, there are more greenhouse emissions. • Walters: It also has to do with inspection and maintenance. • Moore: I'm not so sure. • Walters: Didn't you find that it was 10% of the reduction? • Smith: The basic emissions inspection program has been estimated to reduce between 6-30% of the CO emissions inventory. But the vast majority of emissions reductions come from federal new car emission standards. The emissions program is the next most important factor. • York: It might be worthwhile to make a recommendation to continue to track the same indicators. • Smith: The indicators section of the current Air Quality Plan calls for tracking VMT growth rate. • Stanley: So you don't get the comparison. But, who is going to stop you? • York: If we were to recommend they maintain same tracking. • Smith: I think it's in there. There is grams per mile, which is represented in the new indicators table as fleet average tailpipe emissions, and there is VMT. • York: Is population there? • Stanley: The City already tracks that every year. • York: It's just to have a record of it in our ... to have a continuation of a database... • Stanley: Maybe we should make that recommendation to Lucinda personally. • Smith: Maybe what Nancy is getting at is what is officially reported. It does say we will update and report to Council and the public the Indicators Report every other year. If you want it as part of the official Indicators Report, it would be appropriate to make that recommendation. We can always look at it though; that information can be used by anyone. • York: Are there any other things that are going to be removed? • Smith: In terms of measurements, no. In the appendix there is a graph that shows VMT compared to population and other things. It was stated in City "Trends" report, so we reported on it. • Dennison: There is a statistic that the VMT growth rate compared to population growth rate is a closer statistic to air quality than VMT growth rate itself because it is not normalized. I wonder if maybe it should be done. What is the best way to normalize that statistic? Is it per driver? • Smith: It depends what you are looking at. For air quality, you look at net emissions which are the product of VMT plus tailpipe emissions. • Dennison: We have air pollution levels, we don't have anything for total emissions though? Even though you analyze it. You do have greenhouse gas emissions, but not for total emissions for air pollutants. • Smith: That's a good point. We have the two base pieces but not product. That should be in the indicators table. It is worth putting down. It would be total Citywide tailpipe emissions. • Moore: It doesn't throw up the VMT flag. • Dennison: Back to VMT, I suppose as far as our responsibility goes, that VMT growth rate normalized somehow might be a better indicator for reporting than just the growth Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 4 of 13 rate itself. If you tell somebody that the growth rate is whatever, the next question is: Well, what was the population? • Stanley: Do you mean just net out the population growth rate? • Smith: You could do it per vehicle. • Dennison: Per capita growth rate or growth rate per driver. • Walters: VMT per person or per driver. • Smith: You can easily get that from this too. • Dennison: You say compared to population growth rate and that's what that is. • Stanley: But that's out. • Dennison: Yes, maybe it shouldn't be. • Walters: I can see their points about the VMT as a principle. We've never been able to achieve that. Never, ever, ever. • Dennison: We've had this debate: if you can't achieve it, should you still remove it as a principle. Or, should you be doing something to try to achieve it? Should you ignore it because it's difficult? They've decided they don't want it in the principles. Whether we want to track it or not is another thing. • Walters: It just needs to be looked at. It doesn't need to be: "we need to make VMT growth rate less than the population growth rate". We need to say we're going to track VMT growth rate per person. • York: This graph shows the street miles and how many miles the City grows. • Smith: This comes out of the Trends Report that the City produces. We can always put together an ongoing graph like that. • York: It would be interesting to include bus ridership. It's up in the last few weeks. • Sunthankar: I would suggest that Lucinda come up with something for next meeting. • Smith: Just to remind you: Council will only be adopting and looking at the policies. I am still in the process of getting input from boards on the Plan and the implementation strategies. For example, Nancy, there was nothing that previously said that we should specifically have a graph with those four things on it: VMT, population, City area and street miles. But it is an interesting thing to look at and the data is available. We can put it in the next Indicators Report just like that. I don't think we need a policy. There is interest in continuing to track VMT and population; I think that would be worthwhile to mention that to Council. I think with Council, there was more concern about this issue as a vision, than as a metric. • Walter: I understand that frustration; that it will never be reached. It doesn't seem right to take it out just because you can't reach it. • Smith: One place in the country that is reaching it: Puget Sound. They had a report in the 1990's that VMT was way above population growth rate. In the last 6 years, VMT was only a couple of percent above population growth rate. • York: Somewhere in this plan, it says we will compare ourselves... • Smith: That's not necessarily comparable, but it would be worth looking at what their situation was. • York: What they have done to do it. • Dennison: If you want to make progress on air quality stuff in general, it is important not to omit the indicators of negative things. Even if we can't meet that standard, maybe it would come out sideways in terms of better efforts at other standards. The City probably has limited jurisdiction over regulating how much people drive. A lot of Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 5 of 13 these we already have data for, and it is a matter of whether they are going to be considered an indicator or whether they will be berated. I suggest that we include as many indicators as reasonable. Including things like: emissions of specific pollutants, the VMT growth rate and the VMT growth rate normalized to population. Do we make that recommendation officially? • Stanley: We recommend to Council about Chapter 3... • Smith: Maybe a more productive time to have specific input on the indicators is when Transportation works on developing their indicators for transportation. They're planning to do this process. It will involve City Council, staff, and the board asked to be updated and informed on that. There is a plan to look specifically at that trigger of VMT vs. population. The one thing is that that's related to transportation and this is related to air quality. There might be some differences, but we can have more of a discussion there. • Stanley: Would it hurt to have it as a note? • Smith: No, it wouldn't hurt. • Stanley: I can do that in the memo. Any more discussion about the Air Quality Plan or Chapter 3? • Smith: For Jim & Mandan One of recommendations from last meeting was to slightly reword the Indoor Air Quality Policy so that it doesn't imply that indoor air pollution is the only cause for concern and outdoor is no problem. Now says: "Because indoor air pollution can be a serious issue the City will take actions to reduce resident's exposure." I think the rest were pretty minor, like, "evaluate" instead of "consider". • Stanley: Because we discussed this last time we had Katie come up with a motion. Katie Walters made the following motion: To recommend to the City Council that they approve the Air Quality Plan Policies as written and that this has been developed to protect both the Air Quality and the public health of the citizens of Fort Collins. The motion was seconded by Ken Moore. • Stanley: Assuming that we pass this, I would put in the other things that go with the indicators. But, the motion deals with Chapter 3, the policies. Any discussion? The motion was approved unanimously. • Stanley: I will get that written tomorrow. • Dennison: Eric would have been proud of us. • Stanley: I don't think so. He's not happy with us. • York: He is very skeptical of "City". It is true that I didn't compare this policy/plan to previous plans and really evaluate that. We've gone over it a lot and I am comfortable with it. • Stanley: I thought there were some major improvements. • Dennison: There he is now. • York: I think we should hear his comments. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 6 of 13 • Sunthankar: I would like to thank Lucinda for allowing us to make the changes and recommendation in a timely matter. • Stanley: Yes, and always taking comments. You are so good about comments. • Smith: Well, I appreciate the comments and I appreciate the amount of time that the board has put into this. • Stanley: So, Eric, you're a little late and we've already passed a motion, but we wanted to give you a chance to speak. • Sunthankar: The motion will not be changed. • York: We wanted to hear your concerns. • Levine: Most of my comments and concerns were probably addressed. Eric Levine handed out a list of his comments on the Air Quality Plan • Dennison: Where did this diesel information come in? • Levine: I believe the Air Quality Plan. • Dennison: They said accounted for 93% of our lung cancer risk or total cancer risk? • Smith: That is from the environmental scorecards on Environmental Defense's website for Latimer County. I think it was added cancer risk. • Dennison: Out of curiosity, what percentage of the vehicle miles traveled by diesels (DVMTs) are from through trucks? • Smith: There is estimate in the mobile model of the VMT mix broken out according to vehicle category. Based on 1995 estimates, heavy-duty diesel trucks were on the order of 4-5%. Light -duty was less than 1%. These percentages are of VMT, though, not total emissions. • Stanley: Let's start at the front (issue of dropping VMT v. population).We can give you a background of what we tried to do. We just got done talking about VMT. We have sent three memos to Council about it. I talked to at least two members of Council. And, Policy T9.1 is already approved; it is a part of City Plan. We are going to put in that we still want it to be tracked and compared: population growth rate compared to VMT. • Levine: There are two concerns there: It's inconsistent with the City's Climate Protection Plan, the CO2 does not change and it's a major tool to get there. Another concern was that secondary sources of pollution are never addressed. VMT causes roads to wear out faster, tires to wear out faster, causes more gasoline to be sold. If you think about the secondary ripple affects of an inefficient transportation system. • Stanley: That's a good point. I think you should also make that to Council. I could use it to back up - I'll restate it so they didn't know that it came from... if everybody is OK with that? • Levine: Secondary sources of pollution. This is actually more for City Council. • Stanley: The Internal Conformance was removed; I know I didn't like that. Can you go back and talk about this one Lucinda? • Smith: We discussed this in the Natural Resources Department and with other City Plan staff and there was not support for having a policy like this. There was a statement that there are no other policies or principles that call for conformance of other plans with City Plan or vice versa. There was an idea for a broader policy calling for internal conformance among all City programs. We did pursue that and there was not support for that. There were questions on how it would be implemented beyond the current situation; which is where staff who works on each plan or program has to be looking Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 7 of 13 out for that in comparison with others. There were those few sentences in City Plan, in explanatory material saying all these other plans are elements of City Plan and must be considered. • Stanley: That wording bothered me. • Levine: Could you clarify how that is different from the ending of the LUTRAQ process? • Smith: I don't follow that. LUTRAQ hasn't ended. • Levine: My understanding was: Land Use, Transportation and Air Quality were so interrelated that they needed to be combined. A plan to modify one aspect needs to take the other two into account. • Smith: The answer would be the LUTRAQ team would be the group looking at that. A policy is not needed on that. • Levine: My other concern is: I understand the City has several niche regulations that are not in conformity with each other. A lot of those policy conflicts are a relatively quick fix. This one is not a quick fix. Once you have infrastructure that is not air quality friendly it is difficult or impossible to fix. • Stanley: Let's put a LUTRAQ update on an upcoming agenda. I agree with what you are saying about that. It is something we need to dog. • York: We raised it before. • Stanley: We need to dog that one to make sure that those plans are being used together. That language in City Plan still bothers me. It should have been something much stronger than that. OK, "Formation of a Task Force on Diesel Emissions". Lucinda you put that in, but then it was taken out. • Smith: It is there under the evaluation and "Taking Steps on Air Toxics". I do feel diesel will rise as an air toxic issue of concern. One of the high priority pollutants was mobile -source hazardous air pollutants. I think that we will be addressing diesel emissions anyway. • Stanley: It's not part of the policies. The only thing we are recommending right now is approving Chapter 3. It is high up on our action list for the AQAB. We were going to find out what the Denver Diesel Task Force is doing first. • Dennison: You heard about the thing with NAFTA and the really bad diesel trucks. • Stanley: It's a real problem. • Dennison: I'm having trouble understanding that decision. The NAFTA treaty compels us accept trucks that don't meet safety standards. • Stanley: It's a poorly written agreement. Our diesel problem will get worse. • Moore: They need more certified diesel inspectors. You could do the legislature if the City is willing. You could bring some laws where you have enforcement officers. If they visually see the opacity over a certain limit, they get a ticket. • Smith: That's a law on the books already. • Moore: Yes, so it's a matter of enforcement. • Walters: The problem is the State just sold their mobile source office here in town. They are out of here come July. • York: Katie you should do a "Thumbs Down"! • Dennison: Who can write those tickets to enforce state diesel opacity laws? 0 Walters: It's Mobile Sources from the State. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 8 of 13 • Dennison: So when a truck is plowing down Mulberry, we're going to call them up and they'll just say "I'm sorry"? • Moore: The City police department could send their officers to smoke school and have them certified as Diesel Inspection Officers. • Smith: That's a possibility. That would come out of the evaluation of what we should do with diesel emissions. • Levine: That's exactly why I wanted to explore this and many other issues. The City is supposed to be a leader in taking actions first. The City has a diesel fleet, TransFort buses and other diesel vehicles. Other City's have switched and made the transition starting in the 1980's. We are behind the curve. The particulates affect health more than we thought. • Stanley: It is part of our work plan. We should get an update on Denver in the next couple of months. • Smith: We'll also want to look at the Planning Calendar. IRC is July 20"now. • Stanley: OK then, wood stoves; I agree with you (Eric Levine) here. We did get something put in about "Consider regulatory action..." • Smith: It is going to say evaluate now. The board did request specific action. Ozone Update The board decided not to have a thorough discussion on this item at this time. Lucinda Smith gave a short update on changes since the January update. Lucinda also handed out a copy of the PowerPoint slides for the board's benefit. • Walters: (Ozone non -attainment boundary) Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) is not included? • Smith: They were. Whatever part of RMNP that is in Larimer County was included. • Levine: RMNP did have violations. • Smith: They've had some exceedances, but not violations. • Dennison: Who wrote the Ozone Action Plan? • Smith: It was a collaborative effort led by Denver's Regional Air Quality Council and CDPHE. Other areas had input; we had a little bit of input. But it was mostly by the big agencies in Denver. • Dennison: Did this come up and go by fast, or was it talked about in a meeting? • Smith: It was talked about in January. It was only October of last year that there was any possibility that the North Front Range would be included in this. Based on some EPA guidance, the North Front Range was included because we are a source for Denver. • Dennison: You might have wanted to consider asking them to defer their action so that this board could have commented on it. • Stanley: It came to us in January. • Smith: At that time, I said I might need your input or Council's input on the City's position. The timeframe was so tight; the truth is there was no way they would postpone. They had to meet legislative and EPA approval for the Ozone Action Plan by the end of this year. • Walters: That was EPA's deadline. It had nothing to do with the City. • Stanley: We were a small player in it. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 9 of 13 • Dennison: I see that, but sometimes the State will have a tendency to say, "We need 99% of the time to get our act together and you get 1% of the time to comment on it. And we'll throw you in at the last minute, by the way." I get the feeling that the Cities took proactive action in their getting to them. Even if we weren't able to throw in our two cents worth. If it happens again, we should hold a special meeting. • Moore: Wasn't it only about a month between defining the boundary and input? • Smith: Yes. You had to have applied for party status in mid -January. There was strong support across the Front Range, including Larimer County and the City of Greeley, for all these points and concerns. Despite that, it was disregarded. • Moore: (Re: Letter from Doug Benevento, Health Department) They sandbagged us. They didn't want amendment calling for study of I/M and ozone on thie Ozone bill because, yeah, it would be part of a statute if they did that. The majority of the people said, "OK we'll take your word for it". Not everybody did. Now that it's all said and done, we get this letter that says, "OK we'll look at this and consider it. But, the I/M Program will not be there because it is in State statue that we can't have any law or program that is more strict than what the SIP has." • Dennison: No, it's the State statute. It's that it can't be in the SIP. • Smith: The letter says what you're saying. • Stanley: That's what they're going to fall back on. • Moore: If it had gone as an amendment, it would have been part -statute. • Dennison: To clarify, is he (Doug Benevento, in the letter) saying that they can't have an UM because the statue says so? • Walters: The statute says we cannot be more strict than federal standards. • Dennison: We cannot have it as a federally mandated part of the set. It does not say that we can't have it. In fact, they promised us that they would consider all the alternatives. • Smith: The letter from Doug Benevento says that: "Air Quality Commission is precluded by State statute from including programs in the SIP that exceed a level of control necessary. This would not preclude your authority to adopt and modify this program." And that's not what we're talking about at this point. We're interested in seeing if there is value in this program at the State level, not locally. • Dennison: They promised to work with us. • Stanley: And you believed them? • Dennison: No, in fact I didn't. That was Brian's last meeting. • Walters: I'll tell you the honest truth: they knew six months ago that the I/M Program was going to be gone. The Air Quality Commission is currently controlled by several people who have no desire to increase environmental laws. They only want to back off. • Dennison: That doesn't mean it's a done deal. • Walters: Well... • Dennison: It's an uphill battle. • Walters: From my impression, it's a done deal. • Smith: We have a couple of things on our side: I just overheard this; apparently Kurt Kastien challenged the Air Quality Control Commission member at the last MPO meeting about this language and assumption that the program was going away. Secondly, Steve Johnson, our legislator, was in the loop with this; Mark Radtke and RJ Hicks have met with him. I believe if we felt a good analysis was not done, he would Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 10 of 13 stand up about that. That helps, but the odds are really poor. One sign is the selling of the Emissions Tech Center. • Stanley: You only gave 50 gas cans away? • Smith: 50 out of 100. • Smith: We're going to do another one at Home Depot and hopefully they will advertise. I have not calculated the air quality benefit for that yet. • York: The last gas can thing was at Foothills? What about the North end of town? What if we did something out at North College? • Smith: The main thing I'm interested in is getting some subsidized advertising for the event. Agenda Planning • Dennison: Should we be doing something in the immediate future about ozone? I'm concerned that we're throwing in the towel. • Walters: I don't think that's the case. I just think they've already made up their mind. • Smith: We are still in it. • Dennison: If it was a serious health issue and I/M would help, then the City should consider doing whatever it takes. File a lawsuit if you have to. They're telling us that we have to breathe dirtier air. • Stanley: I don't think the City has. • Dennison: What should the board do? • Smith: This is what I'm thinking about how this will unfold: the next important information is the study. You'll see that we made very specific requests about what they should analyze. One issue would be: if they don't analyze it to that level, maybe the board could engage Council in that. Once we have some information then we will have to go to public and demonstrate public support to get anywhere with the Commission on an emissions program. The other thing is to make sure that the study is done in time so that we can do a public outreach process in the fall. The hearing is in December. There is survey data; I think we need more. • Dennison: I think the City should get independent advice on the model that they use and not rely on their assumptions on these. We got burned on that last time. I think this time if we're questioning their assumptions, we need to get independent consultants to give a separate opinion. We might have a model that shows a greater health impact. • Levine: Has the City done any detailed analysis on the steps/challenges required to develop a program to go it alone? • Smith: We started that effort with the I/M Feasibility Study. There are some challenges with enforcement and funding. • Levine: Where is revenue collected now for testing? How close does that come to self - funding and what would be required...? • Smith: Even though it might not be much of a revenue change; if it comes to the City, the citizens would have to approve that they were willing to spend their money on that. The issue is tax versus fee. There might be some funding mechanisms, like a possible wheel tax within the City of Fort Collins to fund it. • Levine: But people are spending money now... Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 11 of 13 • Smith: Right, but they don't have a choice. That's the issue. The I/M Feasibility study included a rough analysis of how much it would cost to implement a local program. I feel that if it came to the City, it would have to be voter approved. • Levine: It couldn't be Council approved? • Smith: It could be. Right now, I don't think they would do it. I could be wrong. • Dennison: I'm in the black about what are the health impacts and benefits. • Stanley: I wrote my masters thesis on ozone; I could dig that out. • Walters: It causes lung damage. • Smith: They did a lot of cost -benefit analysis when developing the Ozone Action Plan. They looked at how much the strategies cost. The benefits were in terms of emissions reduction. • Walters: The whole reason for getting rid of the Inspection/Maintenance program: it didn't reduce it significantly and the cost was too much and the equipment was too old. • Smith: Did they give those reasons publicly? • Walters: I don't know. • Dennison: We heard that here from the woman from Denver. If the I/M program would not help with ozone; then we shouldn't be battling over it. • Smith: That's a possibility, but it does have other benefits. We don't want to hang our hat only on the ozone issue. It is important as a safety net for ozone, not solely for ozone. I think it can be modified to make it more cost-effective. • Dennison: We should find out when they're promising to give us the analysis report. • Smith: We'll learn more on June 181h, when Shirleen Tucker, who heads up Mobile Sources, is coming up to talk to the Regional Maintenance and Inspection Committee about the study. And, we'll ask those questions. • Dennison: We should assume that they will probably be delayed. Am I beating a dead horse? Am I wrong about this? It seems like a bigger issue than what we deal with. • Walters: Probably it is not Fort Collins, it is Denver City. And it is not City Council, it is Governor Owens. It's not the Air Quality Control Commission. I think it's so big that it's hard for one city, or one County to take it on. • Stanley: I agree; I think it's the biggest issue we are facing. • Smith: I would say: keep on top of it to make sure the study is done in a timely matter. • Dennison: I disagree. We can't make them generate the study in a timely way. That translates to waiting until they decide to give it to us. It will be too late for us to respond. We can pull some information together on our own; that we can use to guide our early decision -making. Why don't we try to pull together the information we have now on how much I/M would help, how many exceedances we're going to have, how serious this is going to be, and what actions should we be taking, including, but not limited to the I/M program. And then pull out the I/M Feasibility study again and look that over. I don't know if that sends a signal that we're serious. We should find out when that analysis will be done and prepare to have someone else review that on the City's behalf. We could talk to the other Cities about additional protest or actions to be taken to compel the State to treat us in way that the Clean Air Act intended. • Stanley: Why don't we put this on July's agenda? • Dennison: Lucinda, do you think you can pull together that information? • Smith: No; I can compile the information that is readily available. We can make some assessments about how much the existing I/M Program would reduce hydrocarbon Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 12 of 13 emissions. To go the next step and say what affect that would have on ozone concentrations; that involves photochemical modeling. Just looking at the impact on emissions inventory is not unimportant. I've already made some rough estimates. What we need the State to do is update data so it uses local VMT mix. That's just one of many specific requests we made. Even to do that would take a couple of weeks because of the interaction between the State and the City. We don't have resources right now to do the expensive modeling to get what you want. I can summarize the information that we have already and make some projections for next month, regardless of where they are with the study. • Stanley: We can get an update on what happened at the meeting? • Smith: Yes. • Stanley: We talked about this with the Air Quality Plan and ozone. Like, what actions could the City could take; let's take this outside of the I/M realm. So many of the things that we see are region -wide or statewide. We started discussing those when talking about the Air Quality Plan. • Smith: We didn't talk about an emissions program in relation ozone. There is a strategy in there that says, "Work to retain a cost-effective emissions program in Fort Collins." To accomplish that you need a lot of information and at least Council support if not public support. • Stanley: How much Council support do we have on it? • Smith: I honestly don't know. • Dennison: They might not know how beneficial it is. They can't make up their mind until they've seen some of that data. What will happen is we will get the model and say they've used the lowest and oldest model and the numbers are probably all on the low side. The only way they do it is to present a positive picture. So, by definition their numbers will come out on the low side of what consensus would be. Usually when you have a model, you have the software and the data sets that go into it and you could adjust parameters and get a new output without a whole lot of work. I wonder if we couldn't get all the data that they've already put into the model and have your own consultant run it with new inputs. When they did this before, they put in a population growth rate that was significantly less than we've had for the last 3-5 years. We ought to put in what we think are reasonable inputs and come up with new figures that will tell us how many exceedances we're about to have. That's what City Council ought to be acting on. If recent role modeling says that we've got a deteriorating ozone situation, my recommendation to City Council is that they need to fight it, going all the way through legal means if need be. We just can't have the State telling us we need to breathe dirtier air. • Stanley: Can you find out what it would it take to get new modeling? • Smith: That might not be that difficult. We hired LSA before to use the base model and just do a little bit else and this is along the same lines. That was affordable. I will find out. • Dennison: In your opinion, is LSA absent of conflict of interest? Are they going to give us good science? Or what? • Smith: I would say good science. We would be working with the inputs. The other option is the MPO now has Mobile-6 model capabilities. • York: They approved transit with their 1 million dollars because they couldn't put it in to roads. So they unanimously passed the transit program. Air Quality Advisory Board 6/08/04 Page 13 of 13 Meeting adjourned 7.09 PM Submitted by Liz Skelton Administrative Secretary I