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November 27, 2018 NWCG Smoke Managers Subcommittee Conference Call November 27, 2018 Roll Call: Mike Broughton, Colorado/US Forest Service (Chair) Ursula Parker, California/Butte County AQMD (Secretary, Acting Co-Chair) Rick Gillam, Georgia/U.S. EPA, Southeast Region Carol Blocksome, Kansas/Kansas State University Pleasant McNeel, Mississippi/USFS Lisa Bye, New Mexico/BLM Lou Ballard, Idaho/USFWS Fire Center Andrea Holland, Colorado/Retired USFS Paul Corrigan, Utah/Utah Smoke Management Janice Peterson, Washington/USFS Nick Yonker, Oregon/Dept of Forestry Debra Harris, California/North Coast AQMD Eric Olson, California/Siskiyou County APCD Kim Sumner, California/Siskiyou County APCD Ann Hobbs, California/Placer County APCD Andrea Boyer, Idaho/Nez Perce Tribe Julie Simpson, Idaho/Nez Perce Tribe Gary Curcio, North Carolina/IPA The purpose of the Smoke Manager’s Sub-Committee is to increase communications amongst the community of air quality professionals, other state and federal governmental agencies, land managers, and other persons conducting burning activities --and ---those ---who ---are -------interested -in ----smoke ---------management from burning operations. Agenda Intros Schedule for NWCG Conference calls for 2019 EPA Update – Rick Gillam Regional Summary of 2018 Fire Season Smoke Issues, including Camp Fire in Butte County, CA Highlights of Past Conferences and Schedule of Upcoming Conferences Prescribed Fire Creative Solutions Increasing Participation ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Schedule for NWCG Conference calls for 2019 – Please put these dates (all Tues 10am mountain time) on your calendar • February 26, 2019 • May 21, 2019 • August 27, 2019 • November 12, 2019 EPA Update – Rick Gillam EPA Smoke-Ready Toolbox for Wildfires • Enhanced EPA webpage with new tools and information resources related to fires: https://www.epa.gov/smoke-ready-toolbox-wildfires • Links to information on current fires and tools for evaluating potential exposure to smoke o New fact sheets about how smoke can affect health and actions that can be taken to reduce smoke exposure o Additional information on AirNow webpage: https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=topics.smoke_wildfires o Updated versions of Smoke Sense App: https://www.epa.gov/air-research/smoke-sense- study-citizen-science-project-using-mobile-app o See attached resource sheet pdf file EPA Fire-related Research Projects • EPA Region 4 is working with the EPA Office of Research and Development on a Regional Applied Research Effort (RARE) Grant project titled: Southeast Prescribed Fire Experiment (SERX): Emissions Characterization of Fuels Common in the Southeast o The goal of the project is to obtain improved emission factors as a function of fire characteristics for Southeast wildland fires to provide better prediction of regional PM2.5 and O3. The improved emissions factors will be used to improve air quality model performance. o The project will include field and laboratory studies. Multiple prescribed burn sites will be selected in the southeast with ground and aerial sampling (drone or tethered blimp). Also fuel samples will be collected at the sites and taken to EPA’s burn chamber in RTP, NC for a more in-depth emissions characterization. o We are exploring coordinating with NASA/NOAA FIREX-AQ Research Effort which is scheduled to aircraft sampling of prescribed fire plumes in the southeast in late summer 2019. • EPA ORD has a new project to deploy a Mobile Ambient Smoke Investigation Capability (MASIC) sampling trailer to provide short-term advanced air monitoring or wildland fire smoke. o Will be deployed for short-term monitoring at large wildfire events in the southeast. o Also will be located near Augusta, Georgia at an existing PM2.5 and ozone FRM monitoring site for longer-term sampling to characterize prescribed fire emissions. o Advanced monitoring will include speciated PM2.5, elemental and organic carbon, particle sizing, ozone, NOx, CO, CO2, SO2 H2S, NH3 and potentially more. Exceptional Events Draft Prescribed Fire Guidance • EPA has developed a Draft Guidance Document titled: Prescribed Fire on Wildland: Addendum to the Guidance on the Preparation of Exceptional Events Demonstrations for Wildfire Events that May Influence Ozone Concentrations. • As part of the interagency review process, the document has been shared with State Air Quality agencies for review and comment. Comments are due by January 11, 2019. • EPA’s plans to finalize the guidance in 2019. • In response to the request for wildfire exceptional events contact in western EPA Regions, here are the contact names Rick has are the following: o Region 9/San Francisco, CA Lauren Maghran 415-947-4107 [email protected] o Region 10/Boise, ID Mike McGown 208-378-5764 [email protected] o Ursula Parker commented that Katie Stewart is listed as EPA’s Wildfire Smoke contact for Region 9, and Ann Hobbs said that she had worked with Katie. Her email address is [email protected]. o Eric Olson offered contact info at the California Air Resources Board, Theresa Najita (according to CARB’s staff directory, her phone # is 916-322-7297) Regional Summary of 2018 Fire Season Smoke Issues, including Camp Fire in Butte County, CA East: No Report South: Gary Curcio stated that several factors that can influence smoke issues: o PM/plume concentrations can be used to project visibility; o Mixing Height status – mixing height sets your limit as a burner– in NC, different offices use different models and that will affect efforts to burn, even on opposite sides of a county line; o Organic Soils – Gary called them the “Rodney Dangerfield of tools”, (it gets no respect) but is the most potent fuel when it gets ignited in terms of downwind concentrations (and Mike pointed out it affects total emissions released because it doesn’t take into account the depth of the ground fuels). o Moisture in fuels – “Consume 4.3,” the new calculation for emissions, is used in Playground Ver 3 and he assumes it’s in AirFire’s output (being used in the emissions output), takes into account moisture in the fuels. Also on fire practitioners’ side, there are efforts to enhance the program if the web service agrees, to try to have uniformity and consistency and would help air quality if they understand the products. Mike would like to have further conversations about this and we’ll work this into future meetings. Ann pointed out that GOES 17 satellite went live last week. Ann attended a webinar out of Reno NWS (put on by Brian Brong) a few weeks ago - the link to a recorded version of the webinar is here: https://recordings.join.me/DY88qbw67UyzncW3NIExdQ o Mike said that there will be a GOES 18 and 19 for the middle part of the country that may come available soon. o Gary added at the end of the call that another factor is that the fire practitioners need to determine their dispersion window. Central: Carol Blocksome – Kansas had a light burn season, late season rain, so sitting on large fuel loads right now. Rains came in the western part of the state, concerns because that’s the fire-prone part of the state, really concerned if it’s dry over winter. There is also a shift in foothills to Aug/Sept (later season than usual) burns to try to remove undesirable woody species and elimination of some invasive weeds. On the wildfires, their fires are short so smoke is intense but doesn’t last long. Northern Rockies: Lou said there’s been some burning on the Boise National (Forest). Lou was in Oregon when things were worse in Boise, didn’t have the local fires, but smoke drifted in from regional fires. Central Rockies: Mike Broughton shared that they had a number of large fires during their fire season. The 416 Fire north of Durango, (which was likely started by the Durango-Silverton Railroad), put a crimp on the early summer tourist season, and south of Colorado Springs, the Silver Creek Fire, didn’t cause a major smoke problem in most of Colorado because of its location along the lower SE foothills of CO Rockies, but was a huge fire in terms of acres. They did get some ARAs out of it. Prescribed fire season has been busy with a lot of acres burned: near Durango they got just over 5,000 acres in a two-week period – it was the third entry into the area (fuel loads a bit lighter than the last couple of times, but there were still some heavy fuels in some areas). Lesson Learned: next time they’re going to do a week off in between burning/major ignitions to give local residents time to recover. Two weeks straight of smoke was tough for ranchers and communities in the area. The Fire Management Officer has requested that the state air pollution control puts a restriction on their permit to guarantee that the next officer heeds that restriction. Mike added that there were some pile burns in the western portion of South Dakota that caused an exceedance. Private burners were also burning, and those piles were not being tracked. Rick Boddicker is expected to be working with Mike on that. Southwest: Lisa Bye said that last winter there was no snow, so they had a higher than average number of acres burned, mostly on state/private land. This year has been wetter than normal and people have been getting permits (gearing up?). Mike asked if they have replaced the NM Smoke Management Interagency position (Claudia Standish, BLM, retired a couple of years ago), and Lisa shared that they now have a meteorologist out of the SWCC, Rich Naden. Northwest (Washington): Janice Peterson shared that Washington had another fairly large wildfire season; 400,000 acres was burned (not as much as was burned in 2015, when over 1M was burned). This fall, a lot of prescribed burning is being accomplished, aided by the support of an elected official, Hilary Franz, who has been proactive with the Dept of Natural Resources’ (DNR) use of prescribed burning.
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