December 8, 2004 WESTAR Council Meeting Conference Call Summary

The meeting began at 1:00 Pacific time. Council members and delegates present included:

Andy Ginsburg, OR Sandra Ely, NM Kyrik Rombaugh, SD Ira Domsky, AZ Tom Chapple, AK Mary Uhl, NM Doug Schneider, WA Rick Sprott, UT Margie Perkins, CP Dan Olson, WY Mike Silverstein, CO Mary Anderson, ID Terry O’Clair, ND Dave Ouimette, CO Don Vidrine, MT Dave Klemp, MT David Collier, OR Bernie Daily, WY

Guests: Jim Himalya, EPA-OAQPS, Rob Greenwood and Tim Larson, Ross & Assoc.

WESTAR staff present: Dan Johnson, Bob Lebens, Jeff Gabler, Don Arkell

Agenda topics:

1. Updates/announcements (Dan O., Dan J) 2. Spring business meeting agenda topics (Dan J.) 3. Rollout of PSD recommendations through STAPPA (Rick) 4. Oregon experience documenting natural events (David Collier, Annette Liebe) 5. Smoke monitoring project (Peter Tsirigotis) 6. Other topics as time permits

Meeting Summary

1. Updates/announcements

 There were no corrections or additions to the 11/02/04 WESTAR Council meeting summary.  EPA has published a notice of data availability (NODA) for the utility/mercury MACT (there title is Clean Air Mercury Rule). Comments are due January 3, 2005. STAPPA/ALAPCO is developing comments – conference call is scheduled for next Monday, December 13th.  There is a Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC) meeting scheduled for December 15th, during which the monitoring subcommittee will present recommendations on how monitoring resources will be distributed, training, new monitoring rules, and quality assurance, among other topics. EPA will have a teleconference line set up. Dan will circulate the call in number and other specifics.  Doug Schneider (WA) provided the Council with a brief update on the status of the Natural Events Policy workgroup. The group expects to deliver specific recommendations to the Council at their spring business meeting.  The Council approved establishing a WESTAR Board nominating committee. Consistent with WESTAR policy, the committee will be comprised of the current President (Dan Olson), Vice President (Stu Clark) and the immediate past President (Sandra Ely). The committee will make its recommendations at the Spring 2005 Council meeting in Juneau.  Margie provided a brief update on the work of the FACA sub-committee addressing the National Academy of Sciences recommendations. They will present their recommendations to the CAAAC next week.

2. Spring business meeting agenda topics (Dan J) . The group discussed a draft agenda for the spring 2005 business meeting in Juneau, AK. Several refinements were suggested, and the group agreed that the topic of global warming should be added. Dan will circulate two or three different approaches to go through the global warming topic, and circulate them to the air directors as options. It was noted that, with the travel schedules to Juneau, it may be possible to expand the meeting to either start early or end later on Friday.

3. Rollout of PSD recommendations through STAPPA (Rick)

Rick noted that it may be difficult to secure STAPPA/ALAPCO’s concurrence with WESTAR’s PSD recommendations on a timely basis, in part because the issue isn’t as much of a priority to states in other parts of the U.S. While ambitious, the goal is to secure the support of the STAPPA/ALAPCO Board at their January 30, 2005 meeting. To do that, we will first need to inform and gain the support of the workgroup set up by STAPPA, followed by the relevant committees – Emission and Modeling, and Permitting. Dan J. will monitor the discussions within the workgroup and committees. If it appears that we will not be able to achieve the goal of securing STAPPA Board support by January 30th, either because we haven’t had the time to work through the issues, or there appear to be differences of opinion, Dan will report back to the Council and schedule a call to discuss next steps for WESTAR.

4. Oregon experience documenting natural events

This call was deferred until the next call. 5. Smoke monitoring project (Jim Himalya, EPA-OAQPS)

Jim worked through a presentation, circulated earlier, summarizing the objectives and approach to this project. Ten western states are participating, as well as representatives from the federal land management agencies and EPA’s western regional offices. Peter Tsirigotis is expected to provide a report on the project at the spring business meeting.

The conference call ended at approximately 2:15 Pacific time, at which time the group took up the issue of AQRV recommendations under the PSD reform initiative )discussion facilitated by Rob Greenwood at Ross and Associates. The next call is scheduled for January 12th at 1:00 Pacific time.