ENV-04-188 Compliance Implications of Current Ozone Research

Description:

This paper reviews the potential impacts of air quality research studies in progress by the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The focus is on the implications of the research on agency enforcement tools and how regulated industries may need to adapt compliance assurance programs in anticipation of new enforcement technology. HARC is the research management organization for the Texas Environmental Research Consortium, which was established in 2002 to help policymakers improve their understanding of ozone science and modeling along the Gulf Coast. Stakeholders include Environmental Defense, the Greater Houston Partnership, and local government. Although the stated intent of HARC’s research is to improve the data used for SIP development, several of their projects have potential impacts on agency enforcement and industrial compliance assurance. These include: • modifying dispersion models to trace back pollution episodes to the generator based on real-time monitoring data, • using large scale monitors such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), satellite imagery, and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) to identify and characterize sources of emissions, and • aircraft monitoring to back-calculate emissions from industrial facilities. This research will add a new dimension to enforcement and compliance assurance procedures. The evolution of remote monitoring tools may create situations in which facilities could learn about a significant problem through the enforcement process. For example, what if a flare (using a presumed 98% destruction efficiency per agency guidance) is determined through one of these remote monitoring techniques to achieve only 95% control? This means the site permitted or reported less than half of its emissions, which could impact prior netting demonstrations, emission inventories, and Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reporting. Companies will need to ensure that their compliance assurance processes address uncertainty in emission measurements and calculation approaches. As a result, companies will need to identify, evaluate, and eliminate these risks prior to deployment of these monitoring technologies by enforcement agencies. Highlights of those HARC, TCEQ, and certain other research projects that may have implications related to agency enforcement and corporate compliance assurance are summarized below.