EPA agrees to Fairbanks air quality plan
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Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
The Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it has finalized its regulatory action on the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's plan for addressing air quality problems in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. EPA had previously disapproved a failure to address the emission of sulfur dioxide from stationary sources such as power plants. However, the agency now says that it has developed a new pollution model that demonstrates that sulfur dioxide does not contribute the fine particulate air pollution that plagues the Fairbanks region. In addition, the EPA has agreed that a mandate for the use of ultra-low sulfur diesel in boilers and for home heating is impractical.
The upshot is that EPA now anticipates receiving in July a revised air quality plan that it can approve.
The Fairbanks region suffers from severe air quality problems, in part because of the widespread use of wood burning stoves and oil burning furnaces to heat houses. Pollution also results from coal and oil-fired power generation, and from vehicle exhaust. Winter thermal inversions tend to trap cold air, holding pollutants close to ground level, thus causing people to inhale polluted air.
As previously reported by Petroleum News, in October EPA awarded a $10 million Targeted Airshed Grant to ADEC to help fund measures to improve air quality in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The borough plans to use the grant funding to reduce fine particle pollution through a number of projects: the replacement of solid fuel heating devices, replacing oil fueled heating devices with natural gas or propane heaters, and making natural gas available to more consumers by extending the mainline natural gas distribution infrastructure.
Interior Gas Utility, the gas utility for the Fairbanks region, ships liquefied natural gas to Fairbanks and North Pole, to enable gas supplies for residents and businesses. The concept is to replace the use of wood and oil burning stoves with clean natural gas burning equipment. Extension of the utility's gas distribution lines will bring gas supplies to more customers.
--ALAN BAILEY
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