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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 03/27/2007MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 200 WEST MOUNTAIN AVE. For Reference: Eric Levine, Chair 493-6341 David Roy, Council Liaison 407-7393 Brian Woodruff, Staff Liaison - 221-6604 Board Members Present Jeff Engell, Nancy York, Dale Adamy, Eric Levine, Gregory McMaster, Kip Carrico, Dave Dietrich, Deny Georg Board Members Absent Shane Armstrong Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Brian Woodruff, Tara McGibben Guests None The meeting was called to order at 5:41pm. Minutes With the following changes, the minutes of the February 27, 2007 meeting were unanimously approved: Page 3: Remove column and add "matrix/table". Add a "," after scientific and honest. Page 5: Change that data to read "those" data. Add "enter" after could. Add "avoid" after to Page 6 remove "s" in says. Change Co and Cot to read "Co/CO2". Page 8 add "es" to focus. Page 9 add an "s" to goal. Page 11 change that to "those". Page 12 remove the space in "green house". Page 13 correct serious to "series". Remove "it" after experts. Public Comment • No public present. Brian Woodruff public meeting discussion: Woodruff: You passed a motion at your last meeting giving support to the idea of a public meeting and I promised to go back to the staff and find out how well this matches up with what we want to do and see if there's a possible partnership involved. The upshot is yes, there is a possible partnership involved. I'm going to give you the free -form version of what we discussed in our staff meeting because I think that will be the most useful. Some of us were a little concerned about doing a program on air quality alone because so many of our programs such as Climate Wise and some of the other sustainability programs really focus on multiple pollutants and are more over- arching. If you take a one pollutant at a time approach it felt like sliding backwards a Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 2 of 13 little bit. But on the other hand we have some air quality outreach goals that could be helped by having such a meeting. For example we have a survey of the public opinion of air quality that's in the field right now and will be available in a month or so. We also have the ozone season starting up. This is a make or break year for ozone because we have a possible violation of a federal standard in the offing if ozone exceeds a certain level. As far as the timing is concerned, Nancy had mentioned doing this before the students leave Fort Collins and that would mean May and that's a little tight for us. We were wondering how important that is. Even early June would make a difference and meet the objective of getting it done prior to ozone season. Here's what we came up with: a partnership where you, members of the board, would do some of the legwork to create the public meeting. We would make available roughly $500 for some of the cost and you can arrange speakers and possibly a facilitator if you wanted to do a public input session. Often that works best if there's a trained facilitator; just to put that thought in your mind, unless one of you has those kinds of skills. And then there's the logistics of choosing the room and arranging for refreshments if that's desirable. Television is a possibility. Turns out it will be about $300 if you do it in council chambers so that's not really very much. Our part of the partnership would be to do outreach, advertising and setting the agenda for the meeting in conjunction with you. We have some definite things we want to hit, otherwise we wouldn't be interested. That's what I came prepared to say. If you like it, my suggestion would be to form a little committee to get the ball rolling and meet with staff. • Levine: Sounds very promising. Staff wanted something larger than just air quality. What would that look like? The program does need some structure. • Woodruff: For practical purposes, if we do something in early summer it should be air quality focused, not broader. But thinking in terns of farther on down the line, an environmental report to the community that covers air, water, solid waste and various issues might be more interesting to people. There's also the residential environmental program series that now has been going for 20 years in Fort Collins. Those programs run in the spring, January through April. They tend to focus on things that people can do at home to contribute to environmental improvement. Time after time the people who go to those meetings tell us to give them more "what can I do", type stuff. A report to the community on environment coupled with things that people can do at home to help might become a regular part of the environmental program series, if that meets the objectives that you have of outreach to the community. • York: There's a residential environmental program series and a business environmental program series. Which one were you thinking? • Woodruff: I hadn't thought that through. It could be an annual thing if it makes sense or it could be a one -of thing if that makes sense. • Levine: We were discussing both, the public forum and the report to the community in two parts, which makes sense. The public forum should be before the ozone season. I'm not that concerned about having it a little bit after school is out. I think June would be fine with me. • York: My only feeling about that is, who wants to go to a meeting in the summer? • Engell: It's tough to get people anywhere in the summer. • York: That's my concern. • Levine: Before mid June, early June, is that still too much into the summer? • York: Perhaps we should start meeting and see how fast we can pull it together. Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 3 of 13 • Georg: Staff then is comfortable, Brian, with having an air quality forum and then follow that up by a broader environmental forum either as part of that series or as an independent report. Are there air quality questions that staff would want public input on? • Woodruff: We are doing a survey right now asking people their opinions about air quality. Yes, we have a data collection interest. But the forum could ask more open- ended questions --- "What are your ideas and concerns?" • Georg: Could we use that survey as a kick-off. We get the feedback from the survey; we share that survey as part of this forum and ask for further Cher input. It's nice that you've got that survey going because it's a nice way.to say we're out trying to get the pulse of the community; we've got this input; here's what we have heard. You articulate that and ask for more input as well as giving them the report. • Carrico: When do you expect the survey results? • Woodruff: Within three weeks. • Levine: That sounds like we will be able to use some of the survey if we want to for this first public forum. • Woodruff: We would want to present that as "holding up a mirror to the community"; here's what we heard on the survey. It strikes me as very appropriate for the board members to hear from the community and summarize and report that to the council, because you're the council's eyes and ears on air quality issues. • McMaster: That's how you'd see the outcome from the first forum? Would that be a verbal report to council or written? • Woodruff: More likely written. If I wasn't clear, I see it as two halves -- providing information and then hearing back ideas; that's roughly how it would split out between staff and the board. • Levine: I would love to do it in City Hall and have it televised. Mary Ellen Chartran, is that her name with the League of Woman Voters as a moderator, Nancy? • York: I haven't even thought about that. Sue Ellen Carlton would be great too. Brian and I spoke over the weekend and he mentioned $1000.00 instead of $500.00 as a budget. • Woodruff: We anticipated the whole thing would run $1000 or more including the advertising. But we were surprised at how inexpensive the TV part of it was. • York: I'm delighted about that, actually. One of the things our conversations spun in my brain is that it would be great if we can also include the health effects of our common air pollutants. There are great new studies that have been aired. I've even thought of the possibility of having someone from National Jewish Hospital, if we can pay his or her expenses to get up here. That's the reason we're doing it, the reason we're on the board right? We can do the survey and get input. We should have a small committee. Who is interested in helping to organize? • Engell: I'd like to weigh in on it. This is an additional question before I volunteer myself — is staff going to be looking to the board to create content, agenda, planning? At what point does the board's role end and staff take over? Obviously we want to weigh in on the agenda and provide direction for that. • Woodruff: I would expect you would sit down with a small group, committee. • Dietrich: So, you'd make a presentation based on the results of the survey. Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 4 of 13 • Woodruff: Right, and we have information about high ozone levels and the ozone season coming up. Those are the two top issues that we want to hit in terms of a report to the community. We can sit together and talk about what else would be in the informational part of the program, whether it's a speaker from National Jewish, or other issues that you identify. • Dietrich: To keep in line with the ozone theme, you can bring up the speaker talking about all different types of studies but if you just focus that person down to a 10 minute presentation on what is ozone and how does it affect people, places, and things -- that might be something that would be of value. • York: Also particulates and those kinds of things. • Dietrich: There are two primary issues in Colorado, ozone and particulates right now. There's a bunch of other stuff too, and this guy could keep going on about all the toxic air pollutants. All I would suggest is that you get it down to a couple key topics, ozone being one, and particulates is something National Jewish is probably more able to speak to than anything else. • York: That was just a thought. • Dietrich: It's a good publicity thing too. We're having a knowledgeable speaker coming in to talk to the community. A knowledgeable speaker is better than your average "Joe" speaking on air quality. • Levine: The last time I remember an event like this on air quality was back in 1995/1996. It's long overdue. • Carrico: What was the end result from that experience -- was it well attended? • Levine: It was well received and there was discussion on smoking and radon, the two big issues then. It provided emphasis to get the public up to speed and laid some of the groundwork for later actions that the city did ultimately take on both of those issues. • McMaster: We probably want to do something related to green house gasses because that's really hot right now. Back then the issue was trying to get radon and smoking going; now it seems the time has come to get global warming going. • Levine: It is, but the timing is strange on that matter, because the task force is going to start forming before our next meeting. • McMaster: We have interest in that as a board and that's one way to get that out to the public. • Georg: It may be useful, because you're going to get input on that topic. If there was a particular set of knowledge or data that we can get input on it would be appropriate and useful, not just from an air quality focus, it'd still be useful for a sustainable mobility group, it's not like it wouldn't be useful or its not preempted. • Adamy: If we offer that opportunity to the sustainability group or promote their agenda at our meeting? • York: One thought was to have Doug Hutchison because he's connected with the state program. • Georg: It's probably good just to form a sub -committee. • Levine: We'll do that. It's obviously very bad timing for any kind of output from us to the community. But it's good timing, perhaps, to get some of where the community is right at this point in time. • York: Some of the health impacts are related to the same pollutants. • McMaster: Too many people in a small group permit the subject moving forward. Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 5 of 13 • York: I'll let everyone know when it's happening. • Levine: The last time in 1996, there was no technology then. If it were on Channel 14 maybe a short power point presentation would be nice. • Woodruff: I would assume that, yes. • Georg: The sub committee you're planning, Nancy, would propose the agenda, a venue, and a date and have it nailed by our next meeting? • York: I would think so. • Carrico: I have a suggestion for you, if you don't have a speaker from National Jewish. He's a professor at CSU in environmental health and he'd probably do it for free, John Volckens. • Levine: The league of woman voters -- some of those folks are really good speakers. They're engaged and have energy and they're up to speed, if little snags happen they can walk through it gracefully; it's a really good skill set. They would make us look good. • York: Sounds good. We'll set up a meeting time after this meeting. Levine: The next item, climate task force, is off the agenda but I told Brian that I'm just going to give the board a very quick heads -up as far as the Board and Commission involvement. I guess everyone think about it, we really don't know at this point. • Adamy: And this something, what's the process? • Levine: The composition of the climate task force and the amount of meetings, commitment and resources; I don't know how far. Hopefully the basic composition will be there. When I know the composition of the task force, I will be in reasonable shape to make predictions as far as the output. A lot of times the original composition determines output more than any other single factor. • York: I think we should be thinking in terms of budgeting for outcomes as we go along because maybe we can make some suggestions for some budget items for some outcome that can be reached regarding the air quality plan. • Woodruff: Nancy, if I may, I have an announcement on the budget, since that just came up. You had directed me to ask the city manager's office how the board can be involved in the budgeting for outoomes process. And they said it didn't occur to us. They got back to us just today, and the upshot is that there will be a special work session for all board and commission members. I think that's several hundred people. You're being asked to put it on your calendar and we'll have more information later. It will be on Monday, May 7 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Canyon West Room at the Lincoln Center. • York: Well aren't we glad we asked the question! • Woodruff. The notification goes on to read, "This year we are increasing our efforts to gather public input on the 2008-2009 budget priorities. The input from this meeting will be used at the Council Work Session to be held the following evening." So you'll be looking very fresh budget materials that the council is going to look at the following night. Air Quality Plan Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 6 of 13 • Woodruff: Just to frame this, there were several questions last month that seem to be about the basis for how the city does air quality planning and implementation. "Should we look at high priority pollutants, how do we measure progress, where is the accountability;" questions like that. You decided to put on your agenda, as a key issue, to review the air quality plan and its basis. I regard this as an opening shot for any deliberations that you want to have on the matter. I've prepared this short group of slides, and then the conversation is yours. What I plan to do here is highlight the different sections of the air quality plan and remind you about the structure, without going into detailed policies or strategies. At this meeting or at a future meeting you can dig deeper into it if you like. • Georg: A lot of the inventory data that went in came from 2001 and earlier reports. Have we gotten measured data every year since then? • Woodruff: No. The distribution of emissions among the source categories was done by taking whatever data was available. It's more of a conceptual thing rather than an exact mathematical excersise. • Georg: But even conceptually it's very interesting as you pointed out. • Woodruff: For example the fine particles and visibility reduction data came from the Front Range Air Quality Study that Dave and his people participated in. It was a big study that involved a lot of different outfits. The upshot was that fine particles come mostly from motor vehicles. We've borrowed data from others to create this chart. • Georg: It seems to me that if we're going to do an update to the plan in 2008, we're going to have to have a sustained investment to get reasonable benchmark data that we can use comparatively to know what the direction is on these high priority pollutants. I don't doubt that the list will come out the same but better data might help motivation. • Woodruff: Help me translate that into something that I could do in response. • Georg: Measure where we are on these high priority pollutants on a monthly or quarterly basis. • Woodruff. Measure what's in the air? • Georg: What's in the air now, 2007 going into 2008 so we have an update when we do the updated plan and compare to this historical data. • Woodruff. It turns out that we have good concentration data on certain pollutants -- that's measured hourly, year -in and year -out. The table you referred to is about emissions, and that's always an estimate. But I hear what you're saying, sustained investment and improving the baseline data. What end do you have in mind? • Georg: What you're trying to do is to create an easier case for people to consume about what they might have to do. In other words, you can do it because I think it's an important thing and we've got this data from 1996; or it's easier for people to consume if you take in reasonable incremental measurements of the air and shown it's at least not getting better or it's getting worse. Data driven vs. emotional driven. • Woodruff: Okay. • McMaster: And if the ultimate goal is to reduce emissions as stated here, if you're doing a measure and if you say it's data driven and we're not doing too well. • Woodruff: Why don't we shelve the rest of this discussion until we get to the indicator part, because that's the way we intended to be accountable. • Levine: Brian, just to clarify, in that study, you're referring to the one about $2.5M power industry contribution that Dr. Doug Lawson took the lead on? Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 7 of 13 • Woodruff: Yes. • York: If we are to track how much gas and diesel fuel was consumed from the years, is that an indicator? • Woodruff: The report that I'm referring to was around the year 2000. We looked at different ways of measuring VMT. One of them is based on traffic counts on arterial streets. Another is federal reporting. A third is by modeling -- the transportation modelers estimate the number of VMT and compare it to ground counts so they have a calibrated computer model. Any year with a calibrated traffic model gives us a data point. For example in 1995 we had a calibrated model and in 1997 and so forth. The last one is by fuel use. That can be done, but it's not as accurate as the others and there are lots of assumptions that are made, and it's messy. The indicators are to be updated this mid -year. We'll have an update mid -year but not in time for the public meeting because we haven't planned out the work that's involved completely. • McMaster: For us to maybe keep in mind if we're thinking about BFO, this sounds like something we might suggest the city provide funding to get a good and continuous VMT estimate. This seems like one of the things that can really get at the issues. • Levine: Do we have a better sense of which methodology is best now than we did 7-10 years ago? What's the best bang for the buck and what can we have faith in as opposed to another methodology? • Woodruff. I don't know. I'm thinking what's the shortest way from here to there. Bringing back any VMT estimate would be good now. Even though they have various costs and associated quality and uncertainty. The one that I'm talking about, the federal reporting system based on DOT methodology, does have the advantage of being replicated around the country. You can compare the VMT growth rate of Fort Collins to the VMT growth rate of say Portland Oregon and you're comparing apples to apples, even if they're inaccurate they are so in the same way. • Georg: At the end of the day all these methods are going to be very indirect. Finding a way that's repeatable and comparable seems to be reasonable to do as a starting point. • York: What does it matter what the VMT is? • Adamy: Specific goals and objectives. • Woodruff. It's an indicator we've identified -- reducing the VMT growth rate is a key goal of the air quality plan. We want to show over time, that the growth rate is dropping and that would say that we're on track, or if not we need do more. • McMaster: From an air quality standpoint, it's the VMT and it's the amount of the emissions at the source. • York: If we just compared how much fuel every community consumed, am I not correct, each gallon yield 20lbs of carbon dioxide? • Woodruff: Yes, that's always true for CO2 no matter what kind of emission controls you put on it; but for something like carbon monoxide, or hydrocarbons, or NOX it's very different from car to car. You can do CO2 that way but not the others. • Dietrich: Remember that there are other emissions related to vehicles, other than tail pipe. You have re -entrained dust and tire wear that that increase particulates. • Woodruff: And hydrocarbons that leak out of gas caps. • Georg: When we look at Air Quality Plan revisions in 2008, let's think about do you want it to be source driven or pollutant driven. I think it's a good discussion to have again. Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 8 of 13 • Woodruff: The current Air Quality Plan indicators are related to sources. We think it's a fair way of measuring things the air quality plan has identified as high priority. You can see how we're doing relative to the national air quality standards -- that we do every year. Every other year we crank out this list of air quality indicators. That's the end of my slide discussion. There was also a question about what did the air quality board recommend in the last couple of years, and how did that relate to the high priorities identified in the plan, and what was outcome. I created a list of your recommendations from the past few years, and I read through it and made notes about it, but I don't have a slide or detailed analysis on this. The first recommendation is about mercury and that relates to air toxics from commerce and industry. That's industrial and that's our second highest source category. Mercury from a stationary source is in the moderate category of pollutant priorities. Industrial hazardous air pollutants are a medium priority. During 2006, this recommendation is about reconvening the climate task force, that's about carbon dioxide and a couple of other greenhouse gases, and that's related to climate. That's one of our top priority pollutants. It doesn't deal with the source categories because this task force could look at all the different sources, so that doesn't translate as a comparison to our plan. August 2006, prohibiting smoking in indoor public places -- that has to with second hand smoke; indoor air pollutants have a medium priority. I would count this as indoor air quality category. October 2006, recommendation to place more stringent controls on oil and gas well emissions. This has to do with commerce and industry, which is the middle priority. It has to do with ozone and VOC, which is a high priority pollutant. October 2006, recommending transportation planning based on all-inclusive mobility management strategy. This is clearly a source -related recommendation and addresses our highest priority source. The pollutants involved are mostly high priority, too -- CO2, ozone, fine particles. The results of that are pending, because it was an announcement of your intent to do more work on that issue. January 2007, strengthen the greenhouse gas reduction target. That's about climate, a high priority issue. Moving on the 2005 recommendations. You had a memo on budget development in April 2005. The issue is city budget, and that's not directly related to pollutants or sources. I don't have any details of what that was about. Next one is the recommendation not to consolidate NRAB and AQAB. Again, that's not related to the air quality plan. The third bullet had to do with the CSU research site chronic wasting disease getting into the water treatment plant. That is a commercial -industrial issue and the pollutant is a biohazard; that's a wild card. Then another memo on budget priorities and finally a memo asking to re-evaluate the West Nile Virus season and reconvening the WNV task force. That I would regard as industrial hazardous air pollutants, which is a medium priority. I'm not sure this review was helpful, but you can see how your recommendations translate through to the plan that we're all supposed to be implementing. • Georg: Thinking about this public forum, another thing to share in addition to the survey is in what areas has the board acted in advising council on policy over the last two years. Not going through every one of these line by line but then list them off and make it reasonable to share. • York: I'm explaining our role too. • McMaster: I think it was helpful to revisit history. It was nice to have the summary together. Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 9 of 13 • Levine: Looking at this is great and the outcomes are good for a lot of these. In some cases the issues were brought forward neither by staff nor the air quality board, rather, we just weighed in on them. It was Boulder County that did the local government coalition. The sustainability group what we signed off on was the sustainability group's. The gas wells were Jeremy Nichols and his clean air group. I'm just pointing it out that we weigh in more than we initiate. • Georg: There are lots of opportunities to initiate as we get into this budgeting cycle and update the air quality plan. • Levine: I would think so and of course the forums that we're considering and the report to the city. Those are two items that we would initiate. • McMaster: It's good to have a balance between what we initiate but it goes back to your idea, that a lot of what we do is react to an opportunity or situation that comes up. • Georg: So Brian, what's the feeling in the city in terms of how we're doing on the air quality plan? We had this vision in 2004, we have the measurements and stuff in terms of the report, how's the feeling like on the staff and in terms of the city on how we are doing here in terms of that plan and what are the priorities that staff is thinking about in terms of the 2008/2009 update. • Woodruff: We depend on the air quality plan for guidance. But in the last 2 years we've also been under a new kind of budgeting that details our work. Policy and action plan are all combined together in BFO. • Georg: One of the things that's important though is realizing the reality of the budgeting for outcomes process, where is it we want to weigh in, in terms of alignment of policy and action. • York: Our April meeting we should have a chunk of time to think about BFO so that we go to the May 7`s meeting with some ideas and maybe it could be a brain storm and bring in Lucinda and Kathy Collier. • Levine: Besides the synergy list, before I forget, the other big issue that is lost or threatened in BFO is the long-term transportation policy, and mobility management. Long-term city growth policy tends to get overlooked because the most expedient measures of the moment get promoted. • Adamy: As Nancy pointed out we should stratagize. I think that's an excellent suggestion if you're working on the agenda for next month. • Levine: Right, those are two. • Georg: It seems there are indirect knobs and very direct knobs. There are direct things you can do to perhaps see the outcome and there are some indirect things you can do in which you'll be able to see the outcome. Does the staff have a priority focus on policies or actions, in terms of a policy perspective and an action perspective, in terms of that air quality goal going forward? Independent of BFO or what we've done to the plan before but as we think about where we're investing city resources for the next two years or whatever; are there a set of policy focus points and action focus points? • Woodruff: 'That's a good question and just the sort of question that we need to engage in the staff. We do rely on the air quality plan to give us the policy direction. We also rely on the air quality plan to give the broad direction on which kinds of strategies. But we come up with new things, too, as the plan ages. A lot of the conversation that we have in staff meetings is about organizing various kinds of outreach events and the public education part of what we do. VMT and mobility management are an important Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 10 of 13 policy point that we have worked on, but the department has come to the end of what we can do on that issue. We had a consultant study on best practices, which has good information, but it's very flawed in terms of being useful for changing people's minds. How do you give that information "legs?" That part is not in our portfolio to do. We took it as far as we could in the Natural Resources Department, and its now in the hands of other departments. • Georg: Based on our discussion last time, we talked about where we are and our priorities as a board. It seems like one of the things that might be useful is to see based on priorities and interest of the board being worked on, what are the policy questions and what are the action questions where there is overlap of interest of where we might be useful of providing input to the staff. • Levine: The BFO process is one thing that concerns me. The tools to even do policy are very dependent on that. • Georg: I didn't mean to put you on the spot on the question I asked you, but I do think it's important that we share where we were on this air quality plan as a basis for us moving forward on the update to what we're going to be working on. We talked about what our interests were last time in terms of our priorities and ultimately I think it's subsequent to this direction Nancy suggested in terms of getting ready for this May 7'b meeting. It's also then taking a look at the policy areas, and each of those areas as a board. We should be taking a look at some of these policy areas and say where is it where we could or should help city council in those areas. • Woodruff: You could take a look at the existing policies and comment to the council on the extent to which they've been implemented. • Georg: That's a good starting point. So reviewing the policies in those areas that you choose is our 4 or 5 topics, I can't remember what they were exactly. Then providing feedback on the implementation on those policies and there relationship to BFO. • Levine: Our second of the five is to review the air quality action plan. • Georg: We're getting there right now. • Levine: And the education and report to the public being number one, which we just spoke about. • York: Sustainability and climate is number one. • McMaster: Brian, could you send the AQAB work plan priorities 2007 electronically? • Woodruff: Yes. It will be sent as a Word file. • Levine: We said last month we'd pick maybe 3 to 5 top priority issues. If there's going to be #5, maybe this year it should be the trash trucks or districting, I would suggest. Regarding the WNV task force issue, I called Tom Vosburg and time is running out on this issue. He's busy and he's in the loop and not his role anymore because he's a knowledge base in the city on the issue and he's needed. He'll get back to me and what are his openings are before I can call up others to schedule. I believe that Chet Mort said he would be able to contribute. • McMaster: Do we have a contingency plan if Tom can't do it? • Levine: I don't know, what would you suggest? • McMaster: The only thing I could suggest is to go to Darin and ask what we'd need to do and see if he supports it. Maybe it would have to be someone else besides Tom. • Levine: The date is a little late and I think we're shuffling people's schedules. If it doesn't happen in a week, I'll give Chet a call and see what his availability is. Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 11 of 13 • Woodruff: Do you know if city staff is consulting with Chet? • Levine: He played the lead role in the original recommendations and the original program that we had. • Woodruff: Remind me what's the purpose of the WNV task force. • Levine: We're spending $2.5 million in two years on a mosquito control program that we're not sure if it's WNV-based anymore or is it a nuisance program. Its kind of defacto status and it has a life of its own and it doesn't seem to be in the budgeting process. • McMaster: What also prompted this was the initial heavy reliance on the aerial spraying adulticiding; people saying that may not be a very good approach. Both for money and lack of effectiveness and health. • Woodruff. So you're uncomfortable with continuing what's been done before? • McMaster: Once it got started it's now becoming a government institution and no one is reviewing it. • Woodruff. I see. • McMaster: There was also talk at last meeting about contacting Gordon Pierce. • Levine: I didn't send out a letter. I sent out an email, and followed it up with a message and then a phone conversation and suggested to Gordon is a letter from our board or the city council really necessary since we're so close and he said no, he didn't think so. • York: The effect is the Coloradoan is reporting on carbon monoxide and ozone, but visibility is NA. • Dietrich: It should be showing up any day now. My company volunteered to compile the data and do the calculations and provide the information to the state on a regular basis. It's the state's responsibility to report on ozone, CO, etc. to the Coloradoan. We also offered if the state wanted the Coloradoan to pick it up from us they could. We're just posting it up to an FTP site but I would expect the state would just deliver everything. Everything's in play; there's nothing technically standing in the way. • Levine: Is that because visibility is more of an aesthetic? • Dietrich: No, visibility is just a bit more complex. Technically its different data loggers and calculations that have to be put into play that has to be estimated, it's not a straight forward number, it has to be estimated. That's in play. • Woodruff: You had requested information that would allow you to calculate the total emissions from the city fleet. All the cars, buses, mowers, backhoes, etc. We asked Tracy Ochsner, and he came around a week later and had finished the report. He gave a listing of 100s of vehicles with their year, make, model, department that operates them and the annual mileage for 05/06, in some cases its hours of operation rather than miles. The bottom line is the information about the vehicles and their operating times and distances is readily available. He also thanks us for asking, because the fleet data has already proven useful to him the first week that he pulled it together for us. • Levine: This is why we need those connections between transportation and AQAB staff. This is a perfect example that we don't want to lose that because there is synergy there I think. • Dietrich: We still need the emissions factors. Woodruff: Dave is providing the appropriate reality check, because we don't have the emissions side of the equation. We have the mileage side, but we don't have the emissions side and that's much harder to figure out. Staff has to find the appropriate Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 12 of 13 tool to estimate the emissions. There are some candidates, this is a little research job for me now to figure out what tool we might be able to use and then talk with Tracy again to get the input data so we can use that tool. We could use the "mobile" model, and ICLEI has an emission -estimating tool for fleets. EPA has an emissions tool dealing with diesel emissions quantification for fleets on their site and there may be some others. The strategy will be to talk to the health department's emission inventory people and see if they can help us simplify it. Estimating emissions from the fleet is something that many people have done before us. It's just that we need the right tools and the right data, orchestrated. • Dietrich: Do you have the time to do that? • Woodruff: We have time and we have a little bit of consulting money we can put into it. It's looking pretty good but it's not a promise at this stage. From the analyst point of view, part of the difficulty here is that most emissions estimation is done on a much broader basis than this. Here we're looking at a very small number of vehicles and we're trying to pick out differences in the total due to replacing a few vehicles with cleaner ones and having some vehicles driving less miles because of that pricing policy that they put in place. The differences that we're trying to pull out are delicate. The numbers may not jump out at you. • Adamy: 1200 city what about the impact of contract vehicles. Fleet staff has an obligation in the future I think to investigate that as well. They just can't passively sit back and say we only have 1200 vehicles but we contract 3000 or 5000. • Georg: I was amazed (at training) at the number of incremental employees that he city has over the summer for example. I think we have to start someplace. There's second and third and fourth step. If we were to do this, I think another step is to bring CSU and PSD on board and do we have similar information from them. But we can't ask them for information if we don't have it for ourselves. • Woodruff. Dale, we can address that issue through purchasing procedures. We have a lot of green purchasing ideas already on board. It's not too much of a stretch to say to a contractor in order to bid this job you need to have such and such emissions standards on your vehicles. I don't think we've gone there yet. • Levine: Historically the city showed leadership by example. That's been one of our policies since day one. The climate protection policy was off for one month because the city setting itself a goal of leading by example. Election of Board Chair & Vice Chair Nancy York moved that Eric Levine continue as the AQAB Chair and that Greg McMaster continue as Vice -Chair of the AQAB. The board unanimously approves the motion. Committee Updates • None. Meeting adjourned 8.00 PM Air Quality Advisory Board 3/27/2007 Page 13 of 13 Submitted by Tara McGibben Administrative Secretary I Approved by the Board on �- tLi� Q '�� , 2007 Signed Tara McGibben Date Administrative Secretary I Extension: 6600