NWDA Air Quality Committee Cover letter

3.13.12

 

Ron Walters, President, NWDA Board

 

Dear Ron,

 

I will cc this cover letter and our Work Plan draft No 10 to all the members of the Board.  Today we posted our minutes for our meeting last night.

 

At last night’s meeting  the Committee asked me to write a  cover letter from our Committee to you and all Board members to remind you that our work on the committee is voluntary and unpaid.   We are finding many of the suggestions offered to change our work plan overly broad and ambitious.  In fact some of the suggestions are for a work plan suitable for the DEQ at a cost beyond what we can realistically hope to fund.

 

During the over fifteen years of our operation as a Board committee, we have acquired a list of air quality controls that Esco put on the two plants since 1994, when we began working on neighborhood air pollution issues.   And in addition to the work already accomplished at Esco, we were instrumental in getting DEQ to adopt a rule requiring capture equipment when loading and unloading fuels along the riverfront.  This prevented tons of benzene and other contaminants going into the neighborhoods (CA & WA states already had this rule at the time).  We were instrumental in getting Faulkner on 28th & Thurman to drastically reduce emissions of Styrene.  A pregnant woman lived directly across the street.

 

These are some of our accomplishments.  But during the last two years of writing this work plan (our one pager had been good for years) we have been able to do little else than respond to demands for rewrites, attend meetings etc.

 

We are now wanting to get back to the work of the Committee.  In addition to passing the work plan 10,  which responds to many of the demands made to us,

we are asking you to place on the agenda a motion from our Committee to change the website to reflect our name change to the NWDA Air Quality Committee.  Please remove Health & Environment from the website, as there is no functioning H & E

Committee now.

 

With thanks,

 

Sharon Genasci, Chair, NWDA Air Quality Committee