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EPA issues Fairbanks air quality notice
Agency partially disapproves and partially approves state plan for dealing with poor air quality in Fairbanks-North Star Borough Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued a notice, proposing that it will approve in part while also disapproving in part the state’s plan for dealing with poor air quality in Fairbanks-North Star Borough.
The agency has opened a 60-day public comment period for its proposed rulemaking, before issuing a final action in the matter. The public comment period will include a public hearing in February in Fairbanks.
Winter air quality in the Fairbank region has been a long-standing problem, in part because of the widespread use of wood burning stoves 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.
“Over the past 13-plus years, the state and borough have achieved important reductions in particulate levels. However, Fairbanks residents continue to endure potentially dangerous wintertime particulate pollution,” said Casey Sixkiller, regional administrator of EPA’s Region 10 office in Seattle. “We look forward to working with the state and local officials to improve their plans to meet the federal air quality standards meant to protect people’s health.”
State air quality plan The state has long been aware of the air quality challenges in the Fairbanks region and includes a specific section on Fairbanks-North Star Borough in the Department of Environmental Conservation’s state implementation plan, or SIP, for achieving required air quality standards in Alaska. In 2019 DEC published a new plan for the Fairbanks region in the SIP, including more stringent criteria for the use of wood stoves, a requirement to use low sulfur diesel in oil-fueled heaters, and a deadline for the removal of coal-fired and uncertified heaters from buildings.
EPA, in its new order, says that the U.S. Clean Air Act requires Fairbanks-North Star Borough to be in compliance with the relevant federal clean air standard by October 2025, but that the agency does not believe that the state’s current plan will be capable of meeting that goal.
However, EPA is approving some portions of the state’s plan, saying that these plan components will have the desired affect for certain emission sources. These components include a baseline inventory of all emission sources; an analysis showing that some emission sources do not contribute to the emissions that need to be reduced; and portions of the state’s emission control strategy that apply to wood-fired heating devices.
EPA cites plan deficiencies EPA thinks that significant portions of the state’s plan will fail to enable the required reductions in particulate air pollution. The agency cites what it believes to be a failure to adequately address the feasibility of using the best available control technologies for coal and oil-fired electricity generation units that lack adequate sulfur dioxide emissions controls; a failure to apply emission control strategies for commercial, industrial and residential heating sources, including a requirement for the use of ultra-low sulfur diesel for home heating; a failure to conduct an adequate evaluation of emissions controls for other commercial emissions sources; a failure to demonstrate the attainment of the standard for particulate emissions; and a failure to adopt adequate contingency measures, should sufficient progress towards the required standards not be achieved.
The EPA says that, while Alaska has determined that sulfur dioxide in the air contributes to particulate air pollution, EPA has discussed with the state measures needed to control sulfur dioxide emissions, including emissions from coal and oil-fired power generation units that have only rudimentary or no sulfur dioxide emissions controls. There are three coal-fired units and two oil-fired units in the region.
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