Draft Summary of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA)

Science and Technical Support Work Group Conference Call

September 16, 1997

The Science and Technical Support Work Group (STSWG) of the FACA Subcommittee held a conference call on Tuesday, September 16, 1996 between 1:00 pm and 2:10 pm EDT. A list of participants and a summary of the meeting follows.

Work Group Participants

Name	Affiliation

Tom Helms, Co-Chair	U.S. EPA

Harvey Jeffries, Co-Chair	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

David Chock	Ford Motor Company

Russell Koch	TCL

Jeffrey MacGillivray	New Hampshire House of Representatives

Tom Moore	Arizona DEQ

Jay Rosenthal	U.S. Navy

Jay Turner	U.S. Department of Transportation

Steve Ziman	Chevron Corporation

Work Group Members Not Participating

Name	Affiliation

Diana Andrews	Kentucky DEP

John Cabaniss	AIAM

Glenn Cass	Cal Tech

Kirit Chaudhari	Virginia DEQ

Ellis Cowling	SOS

Ken Demerjian	SUNY

Cyril Durrenberger	TNRCC

Bruce Hill	Appalachian Mountain Club

Jay Hudson/Leon Outlaw	Santee Cooper

David Kelly	Navajo EPA

George Lauer	ARCO

David McNeill	Utah DEQ

Rich Poirot	Vermont DEC

S. Trivikrama Rao	New York ARB

Pradeep Saxena	EPRI

Mark Scruggs	DOI

Manop Vanichchagorn/Michael Smithwick	Louisiana DEQ

Dan Weiss/Mike Teague	Cinergy/UARG

Jeffrey West	GPU Service Corp.

Non-Work Group Participants

David Sanders and John Silvasi, EPA/OPSG.

Summary of the Meeting

The meeting began with David Sanders asking how the new community modeling workshop fit in with the plan.

Jeffrey MacGillivray said that he had spoken with Ellen Baldridge about workshops and suggested that the group should talk about the issue face-to-face.

Harvey Jeffries said that it would be possible for the group to announce the workshops.

Jeffrey MacGillivray said that EPA set up a structure to address certain issues. He then added that the workshop is sponsored by EPA ORD, not by OAQPS, and therefore is not designed for OAQPS needs.

Harvey Jeffries stated that community modeling is a model that is expanded by the community and not set prescriptively at a national level. This term has been used for a long time. The term may be confused by some with community oriented monitoring. Community modeling means more than just a model available to the public domain.

Jeffrey MacGillivray said that he believes that community modeling is open and evolving rather than closed.

The agenda for the conference call was briefly discussed.

Tom Helms asked Jeffrey MacGillivray to give the Work Group a pitch for his method.

Jeffrey MacGillivray asked how this pitch was different from what he had already said.

David Sanders said that the group had discussed a peer review of his work.

Harvey Jeffries said that the group had not received a hardcopy of the information presented at the last face-to-face meeting.

Jeffrey MacGillivray apologized for the delay.

Harvey Jeffries said that Jeff MacGillivray had skipped over a lot of the package during the Portland meeting and asked him to offer more than one example so that the group could evaluate it and ask specific questions.

Tom Helms said that EPA does not understand MacGillivray's method completely. He asked for clarification-Are these high days/low days/average days that are used in the examples? EPA would like the kind of give-and-take that comes from questions and answers to MacGillivray.

Tom Helms said that S.T. Rao would have to represent Tim ??? and their method.

Jeffrey MacGillivray acknowledged that there are significant overlaps and good agreement between both analyses.

Tom Helms said that the peer review would occur in Chicago so that the EPA is able to observe reactions from the panel.

Closeout of the RFP Paper

John Silvasi asked Steve Ziman to add input during the discussion. There are two items on Reasonable Further Progress (RFP): 1) National/Regional Strategies (NRS) asked the Science and Technical Strategies Work Group to answer three questions, and 2) the review of the paper.

Steve Ziman said that the group was going to add a one-page summary to the front of the document. He stated that Cyril Durrenberger had the document right now.

John Silvasi remarked that the paper would then go up on the TTN.

Steve Ziman said that this would be the background document. The group decided that this would be part of it.

John Silvasi noted that Sarah Pierce-Sandner will present the paper on the tenth. She will focus on the issues where there was consensus. There were a lot of areas without consensus, even on the key issues. On the issue of metrics, there was not consensus.

Jeffrey MacGillivray asked what the most recent draft was and if one had come up recently.

Steve Ziman replied that the September 4th paper is the most recent.

Tom Moore asked if the paper only applied to ozone.

Steve Ziman said that he felt that the technical problems with PM had to be dealt with first.

John Silvasi reasoned that the RFP paper was intended to cover both PM and ozone. The issue of regional haze was discussed in FACA. There was not consensus on how regional haze should be addressed. The environmental groups felt that integration should be addressed but other sectors did not.

Tom Helms said that David Sanders would show him how the issue paper is coming up in FACA in Chicago.

David Sanders stated that there were some policy papers which did not concern science. On the economic incentives paper, there was mention of a CAA investment fund being established. What should the design of the fund be? Would it be state or regional? Would the fund include mobile sources?

Regarding the paper on early reductions, there was a continuing question asking if all of the stakeholders had to be balanced.

Regarding the paper on classifications and attainment dates, the Base Programs Work Group suggested that these issues need to be considered simultaneously. The designation takes place in the year 2000 under the traditional classification, and then attainment is required by 2005 and 2010 with two year extensions to 2007 and 2012.

Harvey Jeffries asked if these dates applied to areas already classified under the one-hour standard.

David Sanders said that it did.

Harvey Jeffries asked if, under the new standards, classifications had been done and inquired as to what they would be called.

Jeffrey MacGillivray asked if Harvey Jeffries' point was that there were no classifications yet.

John Silvasi replied that this assumption was not correct. He went on to elaborate that the Base Programs Work Group had considered some types of classification schemes in terms of local versus transported pollutants and that attainment dates would reflect whether the air quality was a regional or local problem.

Tom Helms said that he was trying to whet the group's appetites for the Chicago meeting.

Jeffrey MacGillivray said that the issues will be on the board before the Chicago meeting.

David Sanders responded that the issue paper would be available on October 2.

Jeffrey MacGillivray indicated that the group would have to read the paper before the Chicago FACA meeting.

John Silvasi explained that because the standard was concentration-based instead of exceedance- based, it would be independent of the region.

Jeffrey MacGillivray said that the design value was set that way intentionally.

David Chock said that the group need not make this issue more complicated.

Tom Moore indicated that he thought that the group was trying to aim for using concentrations as a classification method. He presented an example area.

Harvey Jeffries noted that the areas still have to comply.

Tom Moore explained that for the area he was thinking of, lawmakers will not work on the one- hour standard.

Harvey Jeffries replied that there would not be a choice about aiming for compliance.

Tom Moore agreed.

Tom Helms said that the area would not have a choice.

Tom Moore indicated that Helms had convinced him that this was not a likely occurrence. Then the current classifications have little to do with science. Moore would like to stick to the severity issue when establishing the classifications.

David Chock concurred that they may have an issue about attainment dates since some areas may never meet the standards.

Harvey Jeffries responded that this would not be addressed until those dates arrive.

David Chock replied that there should be an alternate way for areas that will not meet attainment.

John Silvasi stated that the feasibility of meeting attainment is discussed to a certain extent in the RFP paper.

David Sanders asked if the AOI/AOV approach was still viable under the Presidential Directive because EPA felt it was. Regarding ozone, EPA feels that it has been handled.

Harvey Jeffries said that he disagreed and that the Presidential Directive appeared to be a big swing away from attributing anything to local sources. He said that he did not see national strategies as being able to handle all of the issues and that he did not see EPA emphasizing anything other than national measures for ozone.

David Sanders clarified that he was referring to the establishment of RAMPs. Looking at SAMI, OTAG, and GCVTC, EPA has the prototype structure of a RAMP.

Tom Helms remarked that even if a RAMP was set in the Northeast, EPA would have to define the boundaries. He said that he believed that the OTC will be dealing with that issue in the near future. He acknowledged, however, that in the EPA you will get different answers about the use of RAMPs.

Harvey Jeffries recalled that, according to the Presidential Directive, some areas will have to make no more changes.

Steve Ziman reasoned that if the Directive does not make sense, this Work Group has to address the Directive from a scientific perspective.

Tom Helms explained that national measures will make a difference but cannot be considered a cure-all.

Harvey Jeffries said that he had read that PM is the problem and not ozone.

Jay Turner said that there seemed to be some miscommunication from EPA.

John Silvasi mentioned that the environmental groups opposed the AOI/AOV concept at the Portland meeting. He thought that the contractor was going to put the Conceptual Model together with AOI/ AOV definitions.

David Sanders sent the Conceptual Model out to a small group for review.

Harvey Jeffries asked what is going to be done to meet the problems besides regional strategies.

Tom Helms pointed out that if the RAMPs are put into place, it will not save all areas but it will help. Beyond that, EPA is saying that local controls will hit in 2003 or 2004.

Harvey Jeffries said that Helms' statement is what he has not heard.

John Silvasi expressed his belief that the Work Group needed to acknowledge that some areas will need additional controls to meet attainment.

Harvey Jeffries explained that it was not very clear how those areas were expected to do their business. He said that local controls cannot be assessed without looking at the impact of the regional controls. The need to cooperate and do regional modeling is important. He does not see a mechanism for the States to share the burdens.

Tom Helms said that he would be bringing some information regarding these ideas to the Chicago meeting.

Jeffrey MacGillivray asked if there would be another meeting.

David Sanders replied that it had been set for September 30th.

David Sanders suggested discussing control strategies.

Harvey Jeffries asked how they can be considered without AOI/AOV.

John Silvasi said that he knew that the National/Regional Strategies Work Group has been doing more lately. The Work Groups are still trying to figure out the NSR issues and how to maintain flexibility. He has not seen much detail yet.

Harvey Jeffries noted that if the cause -and-effect analysis has not been done yet, it is a very risky proposition. You have to be able to assess the benefits of NSR.

Tom Helms explained that the EPA is trying to deal with the "I hate you" concepts from the different sectors. NSR is even worse than conformity with regards to this issue. NSR must address issues such as: would it be better to get the offsets upwind. These are issues that EPA is trying to get at.

Harvey Jeffries understood that an integrated approach to these standards would be presented in October. He asked about EPA's recommendation on defining the areas.

Tom Helms reasoned that since EPA is making the designations in the year 2000, EPA probably has a year to look at these issues.

Harvey Jeffries noted that a cause-and-effect analysis would have to be done first. You cannot say anything across the board. You need a planning mechanism. He has heard a lot of people trying to simplify the problem, but hears very little about planning on the local level.

Tom Helms indicated that the Work Group will have thirty minutes in Chicago to discuss this issue.

John Silvasi said that FACA had come out with an AOV Boundaries paper. Since the Work Group does not want to backslide, it would be prudent to keep what is already known.

Tom Helms stated that the group needed to wrap up.

Harvey Jeffries said that the group needed Jeffrey MacGillivray's materials as soon as possible.

Tom Helms interjected that they also needed S.T. Rao's materials.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:10 pm.