Summary of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA)

Science and Technical Support Work Group Meeting

May 5, 1996

Room 1019, Mutual Building

Durham, North Carolina

The Science and Technical Support Work Group of the FACA Subcommittee met on Monday, May 5, 1996 between 1:00 pm and 2:30 pm EDT in Durham, North Carolina. Work group members joined the meeting via teleconference call. A list of attendees and a summary of the meeting follows.

Work Group Attendees

Name	Affiliation

Tom Helms, Co-Chair	U.S. EPA

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

Diana Andrews	Kentucky

Kirit Chaudhari	Virginia

Bruce Hill	Appalachian Mountain Club

Tom Moore	WESTAR

Rich Poirot	Vermont

Dan Weiss	Cinergy Corporation

Steve Ziman	Chevron Corporation

Work Group Members Not Present

Dave McNeill	Utah

Jay Hudson	Santee-Cooper

Mark Scruggs	DOI

S.T. Rao	New York

Manop Vanichchagorn	Louisiana

Richard Paul	AAMA

John Cabaniss	AIAM

Non-Work Group Attendees

Michael Teague, Hunton and Williams (Utility Air Regulatory Group); Tom McPhearson, EPA Region I, Bill Kuykendal, EPA/EFIG; Bruce Polkowsky U.S. EPA/EVPG; JoAnn Allman, Dave Sanders, and David Stonefield, U.S. EPA/OPSG.

Summary of the Meeting

Tom Helms opened the meeting by stating that background information developed by EPA staff is being sent to all work group members. This information is intended to be a starting point for use in developing the Conceptual Model report. It will be approximately 100 pages in length. Work Group members may take this information and modify it as they see fit for use in the Conceptual Model report. Mr. Helms then asked the Work Group coordinators for each team to present an update of the progress of the team.

Reports From Work Group Coordinators:

Air Quality Team

Tom Moore stated that the Air Quality Team held a conference call on May 1, 1996, with most of the team members participating. Mr. Moore prepared a summary of the call and will distribute this to other team leaders. He proposed a standard format for team products so that there will be consistency between each team's efforts. Under this format the potential audience for the product should be identified. For example, the primary audience may be the FACA subcommittee with sub-audiences being EPA staff and/or other FACA Work Groups. Next the level of detail in the product should be addressed. It is important to note that this is an iterative process. The Conceptual Model outputs may prompt more questions which will in turn prompt more outputs by the Science and Technical Support Work Group.

Tom Helms asked several questions including who are the members active on this team, what voids does the team have and what are the next steps for this team. Mr. Moore identified the following team members: Rich Scheffe, Dave Sanders, Steve Ziman, David Chock, Mark Scruggs, and Diana Andrews. The voids the team has include: information on pollutant deposition and removal and integrated/cross cutting analyses (i.e., how ozone/PM/haze affect each other). Dan Weiss expressed his interest in joining the Air Quality Team and said that he will speak with Tom Moore outside of this call to see how he can get involved.

Mr. Moore noted that the team members are currently writing draft sections of the report, and that these sections should be completed by May 17, 1996. David Sanders, the EPA Coordinator assigned to this team, will set up another call the week of May 20th to assess progress on the writing assignments.

David Sanders noted that Mike Smythwick who is assisting Manop Vanichchagorn is a good candidate for this team. David will follow up with Mr. Smythwick and Mr. Vanichchagorn to see where they fit on the Air Quality Team.

Emissions Team

Rich Poirot stated that the Emissions Team has not had any formal communications with the exception of the information that Bill Kuykendal has circulated. John Cabaniss has provided comments on this information to Mr. Poirot. Mr. Poirot noted that there is a need for input from the Atmospheric Processes Team to make sure that the Emissions Team is considering all species of pollutants and precursors (e.g., CH4, CO, etc.), which are relevant to their effort. Mr. Harvey Jeffries suggested that the Emissions Team become familiar with information from the Ozone Transport Assessment Group (OTAG). He also noted that there is a big gap in data in the south. Mr. Poirot acknowledged that he has access to some of the information from OTAG.

Steve Ziman suggested that someone from the Emissions Team talk with Ken Schere (USEPA/NERL) to get information on the recent NARSTO meeting that was held in Dallas, Texas. The purpose of this meeting was to assess the state of the science for regional ozone issues.

Mr. Poirot also stated that his team had a need to communicate with the Tools Team to get more information in the area of receptor modeling. Mr. Poirot noted that there are source profiles available for PM, which are PM10-based. However, these PM-10-based profiles should be relevant to this effort. He noted that when dealing with secondary particles the extrapolation will not be straight forward. Additionally, there are relatively few source profiles for VOC emissions. It was noted that Ron Henry and Chuck Lewis have recently published source profile data for the Atlanta, Georgia area.

Harvey Jeffries noted that recently there have been some papers published addressing source profiles for VOC emissions. One paper published by the Desert Research Institute addresses the high fraction of liquid gasoline found in emission inventories. Another paper published by the National Institute of Standards helps quantify the amount of biogenics in the inventory. Mr. Jeffries said that he would provide these papers to Mr. Poirot.

Bill Kuykendal and JoAnn Allman will assist Mr. Poirot in setting up a an Emissions Team conference call this week.

Atmospheric Processes Team

Harvey Jeffries requested David Sanders to set up a call on Wednesday, Thursday , or Friday of this week to discuss and integrate new information from OTAG. He stated that recent information on isoprenes and terpenes indicate that it is unclear if the reactivity of these compounds that is being used in the current models is accurate. Mr. Jeffries requested help to look at the reactivity of fine particulates. Steve Ziman and Tom Moore agreed to assist the Atmospheric Processes Team with issues related to PM.

Harvey Jeffries expressed concern about having adequate information on the description of meteorological processes, cloud venting, transport mechanisms, and residence times. Bruce Polkowsky noted that Rich Scheffe has added some information on the above areas as it relates to secondary particles and regional haze. Rich Poirot noted that Jim Sissler, Bill Malm, and Mark Pitchford have done a lot of work in looking at these areas also, especially related to Class I areas. Steve Ziman said that we are looking for an aerosol module that carries out the chemistry and physics from a visibility perspective by looking at the size of the particle. He further stated that no one has confidence in doing this type of work. Bruce Polkowsky noted there have been regional haze models that have assumed distributions. Correlations have worked well with seasonal distributions.

Harvey Jeffries requested that a call be set up on Wednesday or Thursday of this week to discuss these issues. Mr. Jeffries will be out next week so he will not be able to deliver a draft until the week of May 20, 1996.

Tools Team

Steve Ziman announced that there will be a conference call tomorrow morning to address the tools available to address the state of knowledge. At that time, members will be given writing assignments.

Team Tasks and Matrix Assignments

Tom Moore asked if anyone had any comments on the approach he took regarding task assignments. He reiterated that the matrix is not limiting and that anyone could address any of the tasks if they wanted to do so. Harvey Jeffries asked about getting contractor support to help put the references in a common format. Tom Helms said that contractor support is available to the Work Group and that anyone requiring contractor support should contact David Sanders. David Sanders noted that the form for the bibliographies is the form found in the journal Atmospheric Environment. Tom Helms stated that Work Group members should send in their references, in whatever format, and they will be put together in the correct format by the contractor.

Tom Moore suggested that we need to assign the references a code but that this could be done after the bibliography is put together. Harvey Jeffries asked about graphics and how we can include graphics as references. Tom Helms stated that this is not a problem. Members can send graphics via electronic mail or fax and the Agency will scan them so that they are available electronically.

Substitution

Tom Helms asked Steve Ziman and Harvey Jeffries to give a status report concerning the use of substitution (i.e., NO for VOC) in an integrated implementation strategy.

Steve Ziman said that Doug Grano sent out a list of questions regarding trading between VOC and NO. The reason substitution is an issue is because of the requirements in the current Clean Air Act that allow trading between NO and VOCs in certain situations. The group members present during this call agreed that because of the complexities involved there is a need to look at substitution on a case by case basis. There is a need to understand what is going on in the atmosphere with regards to pollutant formation.

The question was raised during this call that under FACA and beyond does it make any sense in an area that is NO limited to control hydrocarbon emissions? Mr. Ziman noted that the

participants probably raised more issues than they addressed. The conclusion reached is that there is no easy answer when it comes to substitution.

Harvey Jeffries noted that Doug Grano is rewriting the section regarding substitution and will come back to the Work Group next week with a revised draft. Mr. Jeffries noted that sometimes there are policies that are not clearly based on science. In these cases the science does not support the policy. There are circumstances however when policy is developed for other reasons and the fact that science does not support the policy does not mean that the policy should be changed. Mr. Jeffries brought up the problems many members are experiencing retrieving attachments to electronic mail messages. He suggested that a way to solve the electronic mail problems was for FACA to have a web site on the INTERNET. David Sanders pointed out that as of May 6, 1996, the EPA OAQPS TTN/BBS is a web site.

In closing, Mr. Helms stated that there will be a conference call for the Tools Team held on Tuesday, May 7, 1996. The Atmospheric Processes Team will hold a conference call on Wednesday, May 8, 1996. Teams are asked to complete writing assignments by May 17, 1996 if possible. The Science and Technical Work Group will hold its second face-to-face meeting on Wednesday, May 29, 1996. Harvey Jeffries will present a short update on the Science and Technical Support Work Group to the FACA Subcommittee on May 30, 1996.