• Specialty

  Air Quality
  

• SECTOR

  Government
  

• TYPE

  Environmental Study
  

• CLIENTELE

  State Government
  

• TIMESPAN

  1988-1995

• LOCATION

  Various Locations, US

NESCAUM

SERVICE:

Technical Guidance for Regulatory Initiatives

DESCRIPTION:

Tech Environmental provided professional air quality regulation courses to staff from the state air pollution control agencies of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. The courses included both classroom lectures and several computer laboratory exercises focusing on the use of computer dispersion models for solving air pollution problems.

Tech Environmental also provided technical guidance for regulatory initiatives by the eight Northeast States to reduce fugitive vapor emissions from gasoline refueling operations. NESCAUM sponsored a Health Risk Assessment for benzene, xylene, toluene, and total hydrocarbon emissions. Tech Environmental performed the exposure assessment portion of the health risk assessments that analyzed six likely exposure scenarios: vapor inhalation by self-service customers, vapor inhalation by service station attendants, vapor inhalation by residents living near a service station, vapor infiltration into homes through soil gas migration from leaking underground storage tanks, and vapor inhalation and ingestion from the use of contaminated drinking water at home.

Tech Environmental also completed a study to provide states in the Ozone Transport Region (OTR) with a conceptual design of a regional, market-based NOx budget system for the principal stationary sources that emit NOx in the OTR (electric generating units and large industrial boilers), and to evaluate the feasibility of implementing this budget system. In five areas analyzed in this report, the proposed NOx emissions budget and allowance trading system offers distinct advantages over a traditional, command and control alternative using emission rate limits and emission reduction credit (ERC) trading. As part of this study, an emissions data base for all affected stationary sources in the OTR was assembled from the EPA's 1990 Interim Emission Inventory.

 

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Key Points

• The eight northeast states needed technical advice as they pursued methods to reduce air pollution.
• Tech provided professional air quality regulation courses and technical guidance in a variety of initiatives.