CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD
Cathedral Hill Hotel
El Dorado Room
1101 Van Ness
San Francisco, CA
March 10, 1988
9:00 a.m.
AGENDA
Page
88-4-1 Status Report on Attainment of Air Quality
Standards in the San Francisco Bay Area.
88-4-2 Discussion of the Bay Area Air Quality 001
Management District Program Evaluation Report.
88-4-3 Discussion of the Status of the Compliance 278
Assistance Program (Environmental Auditing).
88-4-4 Status Report on Strategy for Future Air 280
Resources Board/District Control of Organic
Solvents.
88-4-5 Status Report on Efforts to Develop Clean Diesel 284
Fuel Regulations.
Other Business
a. Closed Session
Personnel (as authorized by State Agency Open Meeting
Act, Govt. Code Sec. 11126(a).)
b. Research Proposals
c. Delegations to Executive Officer
ITEM NO.:
Public Meeting to Discuss the Bay Area Air Quality Management
District program Evaluation Report.
RECOMMENDATION
This is an information item. No regulatory action is proposed.
DISCUSSION
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) is one of
several air pollution control districts that did not attain the
national ambient air quality standard for ozone by the end of
1987. Because of the Bay Area's known air quality problem, ARB
staff and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in
cooperation with the BAAQMD, recently conducted a joint program
evaluation of the District's air pollution control program. This
program evaluation was conducted to determine what steps could be
taken to further reduce excess emissions and improve the overall
effectiveness of the District's programs.
The evaluation concentrated on three principal program areas: (1)
compliance, (2) new source review permitting, and (3) planning.
It was the first comprehensive evaluation of the Bay Area program
since 1975.
During the evaluation, ARB staff inspected over 4820 units at 200
industrial facilities and 300 service stations. Nine complex
source tests were conducted and 13 District rules were analyzed
in detail. ARB staff also reviewed all 44 facilities subject to
the District's New Source Review rules which had received
authorities to construct between March 1984 and March 1987, as
well as an additional 94 permits.
The evaluation found that the District possesses an innovative
and well-organized program. It also identified a number of
improvements and revisions to the District's program which, if
implemented, could reduce volatile organic compounds by more than
7 tons per day by improving the compliance rate of sources
subject to certain District rules.
The presentation today will cover the findings and
recommendations contained in the final evaluation report. The
EPA and the District staff are also expected to make
presentations.
ITEM NO.:
Public Meeting to Discuss the Status of the Compliance Assistance
Program (Environmental Auditing).
RECOMMENDATION
This is an information item. No regulatory action is proposed.
DISCUSSION
California has been relying on inspections and penalties to
enforce air pollution control regulations. While this has been
an effective non-compliance deterrent, we know that inspectors
can visit most sources only once or twice a year. Thus, 99% of
the time compliance depends on industry knowledge, vigilance and
good will.
The Compliance Assistance program (CAP) is designed to help
increase compliance by providing industry with self-inspection
handbooks explaining how to keep their equipment in compliance at
all times. The program is also designed to assist the districts
by providing to inspectors rule-specific technical manuals
enabling them to perform more competent source inspections.
Handbook and manuals are currently under development for use at
gasoline service stations (Phase I and II).
The Compliance Assistance Program, when fully implemented, will
supplement and balance our present program which now relies on
stringent enforcement of air pollution control regulations. Our
expectation is that effective industry pollution prevention
programs will result in fewer violations, and therefore lessen
the need for punitive action. We also think that it will reduce
emissions and thereby help California meet the national
health-based air quality standards.
The staff will present an overview of the program design, discuss
the opportunities the program offers to reduce excess emissions,
and give a status report on program progress.
ITEM NO.: 88-4-4
Report on Strategy for Future ARB/District Control of Organic
Solvents.
RECOMMENDATION
None. Status report only.
DISCUSSION
The staff has identified the use of organic solvents as one of
the few remaining large sources available for further reductions.
Furthermore, it is anticipated that emissions from organic
solvents will increase unless substantial reductions are
achieved. The use of organic solvents is widespread by industry,
as well as by consumers in a variety of household products. Due
to the nature and use of these products, the traditional
approaches to control the resulting emissions have not provided
the reductions needed to achieve the national ambient air quality
standard for ozone.
Uses of organic solvents-Organic solvents are used widely in a
number of industrial and consumer applications. Degreasing and
dry cleaning operations use organic solvents, and organic
solvents are found in surface coatings such as paints, varnishes,
and sealants. Organic solvents are also used in household and
personal care products such as oven cleaners, hair sprays, and
deodorants. Use of these solvents results in emissions or
organic compounds.
Organic solvents and air pollution-Approximately 870 tons per
day, about 42 percent of organic compound emissions from
non-vehicular sources are produced by the use of organic
solvents.
In spite of current regulatory efforts, this percentage will
increase over the next decade as emissions from mobile sources
decline, unless further progress is made to reduce emissions from
solvent use sources. Increases in emissions from these sources
will exacerbate the ozone air quality problem and will affect
other standards such as particulate matter. In some cases,
emissions from organic solvents may be toxic air contaminants.
Current efforts of control-From the mid-1970s through the early
1980s, the Air Resources Board (ARB) and local districts
committed considerable resources to developing guideline measures
for controlling organic compound emissions from solvent-use
sources. These measures were designed to achieve substantial
emission reductions.
Local districts subsequently adopted rules based on the guideline
measures. Traditionally, these rules primarily feature add-on
controls, solvent content limits, or a combination of both to
reduce emissions from solvent-use sources.
Of the solvent-use sources that are regulated by the districts,
which include architectural coatings, asphalt paving, degreasing,
dry cleaning, printing, and other coatings besides architectural
coatings, district rules have resulted in about an 80 tons per
day reduction from 1979 to 1987. This is about a 10 percent
emissions reduction in total solvent emissions.
Adequacy of current efforts-Unfortunately, by the end of 1987
organic compound emissions overall from solvent-use sources had
increased by 9 percent over the 1979 level (from 800 to 870 tons
per day). Obviously, more needs to be done.
A recent evaluation by the ARB staff of the rise in emissions
from solvent-use sources revealed two important trends.
First, the rise in emissions comes primarily from non-industrial
solvent use; use which is generally not subject to traditional
district permitting and enforcement. Examples are architectural
coatings and consumer products which tend to be manufactured for
statewide use and move in commerce throughout the state. Despite
some reductions from architectural coatings, emissions rose by
roughly 13 percent from 1979 to 1987, from 380 to 430 tons per
day.
Second, industrial source emissions are also rising slightly,
despite district control efforts. A 5 percent growth, from 420
to 440 tons per day, is evident here.
Why current efforts are not working-In analyzing why the present
control approach is not producing needed results, the ARB staff
noted that regulation of solvent use in non-industrial settings
poses some unique problems. For example:
1) There are numerous products and product formulations. It is
a huge and labor-intensive task to acquire the technical
data and product expertise needed to specify new, lower
solvent limits for each one. Combined ARB and district
resources are currently not adequate.
2) If product by product control is imposed district by
district, industry is faced with serious manufacturing and
distribution problems, since inevitably districts will
differ in their judgement on limits.
3) Districts will face serious enforcement problems as consumer
and commercial users acquire non-complying products from
other areas of the state.
4) The product-by-product approach provides little incentive
for manufacturers of products which contain solvents to
perform the necessary research to develop less polluting
products.
The effect of these problems is that numerous solvent sources are
virtually uncontrolled and progress on others, like coatings, is
rather slow.
What approach should be taken?-To address the problems above, the
following actions are being taken:
1) The ARB has requested a budget augmentation to triple the
number of staff working full time with local districts to
develop new solvent controls.
2) The Administration is sponsoring legislation, SB 2646,
Presley which will give the ARB the authority to set
statewide solvent content limits on non-industrial solvent
categories. The bill also provides for an additional
regulatory tool, non-compliance penalties, to use if
indicated to promote technological innovation.
3) Internal analysis of economic-based controls. This is a
staff study of the feasibility of replacing the traditional
"command and control" approach with economic incentives to
encourage lower solvent use for at least some products.
Staff efforts will be coordinated with efforts of the South
Coast AQMD which is also looking at economic controls,
though in a broader sense. Legislation would be needed to
implement any such approach.
ITEM NO.:
Status Report on Development of Clean Diesel Fuel Regulations.
RECOMMENDATION
This is a status report.
DISCUSSION
The Air Resources Board has an ongoing program to develop
controls for emissions from diesel-powered motor vehicles. As
part of that program, the Board has established exhaust emission
standards for diesel-powered motor vehicles, and has adopted a
motor vehicle diesel fuel sulfur content limitation for such fuel
sold in the South Coast Air Basin. The staff is investigating
strategies to reduce further diesel-powered motor vehicle
emissions by modifying diesel fuel composition. Diesel fuel
modification requirements that would provide a cleaner diesel
fuel could include, individually or in combination, a reduction
in sulfur content, or specifications for diesel fuel volatility.
This program has three parts:
A. Establishing an acceptable inventory of emissions from
diesel motor vehicles. The staff held a public workshop on
December 15, 1987, to discuss a draft inventory of emissions
from diesel-powered motor vehicles. The draft inventory
shows that for 1987, emissions from diesel-powered motor
vehicles in the South Coast Air Basin were about 27 percent
of the statewide emissions of 110 tons per day of
particulate matter from diesel-powered motor vehicles that
are registered out-of-state account for about 20 to 30
percent of the total statewide inventory of emissions from
diesel-powered motor vehicles. The staff has received no
adverse comments on this draft inventory.
B. Investigating the impacts of fuel sulfur content, aromatic
hydrocarbon content, and fuel volatility on hydrocarbons,
oxides of nitrogen, and particulate matter emissions from
diesel motor vehicles. To investigate the effect of these
parameters on emissions, the Coordinating Research Council
(CRC) is conducting tests on several different heavy-duty
diesel engines. The CRC's contractor has completed tests on
a Cummins-NTCC 400 heavy-duty diesel engine fueled with nine
different fuels, and is currently testing a DDAD-60 heavy-duty engine.
A preliminary analysis of the data from the
first CRC engine tests confirms the results from other
earlier, less comprehensive tests. Those tests showed that
reduction in diesel fuel aromatic hydrocarbon content would
reduce diesel engine particulate matter emissions in the
range of 10 to 50 percent. The contractor has scheduled
tests for a third engine. All tests are scheduled to be
completed by August 1988. The ARB staff will complete an
analysis of the emissions test data from the first two
engine tests by April 1988.
C. Investigating the cost impact on California diesel fuel
producers of a requirement to provide cleaner diesel fuel.
Arthur D. Little Inc., under contract with the Air Resources
Board, has been investigating the technical and economic
feasibility of reducing the sulfur and aromatic hydrocarbon
content of diesel fuel. The calibration of the models that
have been developed by Arthur D. Little to model California
refinery operations has been completed, and the process
options that are required for aromatics and sulfur content
reduction have been selected.
The remainder of the Arthur D. Little work includes the
scale-up of the models' results for the California oil
refining industry and the finalization of the cost analysis
for the selected process options. That work is scheduled to
be completed by mid-April 1988.
The ARB staff will combine the results of the analyses of the CRC
emissions test data and the estimated costs of modifying diesel
fuel composition to prepare the recommendations for diesel fuel
regulations for the Board to consider at its October 1988
meeting.