We’re not going to mince words: The committee tasked with recommending whether or not an Allegheny County Health Department plan to eliminate a $1.8 million deficit and fully fund its Air Quality Program should be approved by the Board of Health for public comment failed in its duties Monday night.   Seriously, though: The proceedings of the nearly 90-minute foundering special meeting of the Air Pollution Control Advisory Committee Monday were cringey in its best moments and straight embarrassing in its worst.   Here’s what happened and why we hope yinz will join us in raising a little hell at the next Allegheny County Board of Health meeting, which is slated for 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 17.   About That Deficit, ACHD’s Plan to Beef Up Bottom Line & That Shameful Committee Vote   Allegheny County recently announced plans to increase funding for its air quality program in part through increasing fees imposed upon industrial air polluters. Environmental groups like GASP have pledged their support for the plan to get to public comment.   You can read all about how the deficit was announced, and why we are rallying support for the draft plan here .   Long story short: Procedurally, ACHD are tasked with seeking recommendations for policy issues like this from the Air Pollution Control Advisory Committee before taking it up the chain to the Allegheny County Board of Health.   To its credit, Deputy Director of Environmental Health Geoff Rabinowitz did his due diligence: At the committee’s last regularly scheduled meeting in June, he presented a lengthy report about the state of the Air Quality Program’s finances and detailed proposal to shore them up in part by increasing fees paid by polluters.   Unfortunately, the committee lacked a quorum that night and was unable to take formal action. For inquiring minds that want to know, it was the third straight meeting where there were not enough members in attendance to convene.   For those folks who might not have a frame of reference for how often boards and committees lack a quorum, please know that it is very rare indeed.   That lack of a quorum prompted a special meeting of the committee, which took place Monday, barely had enough members to convene, and ended in a 3-3-1 vote.   Committee Chair Dan Bricmont, John Palmieri, and Colleen Davis, voted NOT to recommend that proposal be recommended for approval for public comment by the Board of Health.   Steve Hrzdovich, Sara Mari Baldi, and Courtney Mahronich Vita voted yes.   Oddly, one member of the committee - Anna Batista - failed to cast a vote despite being in attendance for the presentation and naming no conflict of interest. Before voting she stammered, “I don’t know what to say” before eventually telling those in attendance that she was abstaining.   Jeanne Clark was in attendance left the meeting without explanation prior to the vote.   Not in attendance were members Chip Babst, Mary Ann Bucci, Michael Corcoran, Mark Jeffrey, Bob Orchowski, and Anna Siefkin.   GASP hopes the new county administration will take a hard look at the recent absences and dysfunction on this committee and appoint members serious about showing up and putting public health first. More on that from us to come.   Next Stop Board of Health? We Hope So - Here’s Why   Here’s what we know for sure: Allegheny County Health Department needs a fully funded Air Quality Program. Full stop. We think it’s something every breathing being in the county can agree on - and to get there, we have to get this proposal to public comment.   Is the proposal perfect? No. Do we have concerns? Yes. And that’s all the more reason to approve it for public comment. ACHD has said it needs all the brain power it can harness to come up with an appropriate way to fund its Air Quality Program.   The issue is expected to be brought up, perhaps for a vote, at the next Board of Health meeting scheduled for next week - 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday. GASP is going to be there to speak out on the issue and encourage members of the board to vote YES to get this thing on the road to public comment.   This is when we ask for your support, because we will need it: Would you - could you? - sign up to provide a public comment supporting the plan? If you can’t attend, would you consider sending a message to the board? We even have some handy-dandy talking points.   Yinz in? If so, you can click HERE to sign up to speak. You can click HERE to submit a written comment to board of health members (note: these comments are routed straight to members and are summarized verbally at the beginning of the meeting).   Need a little help getting started? Here are some draft comments to use or build on:   Dear Board of Health Members, I am writing today to encourage you to VOTE YES to send ACHD’s plan to fully fund its Air Quality Program in part through imposing higher fees on polluters to public comment. As you know, air quality is one of our most pressing public health issues here in Allegheny County - one that adversely impacts some of our most vulnerable neighbors. Practically, there are MANY reasons to support the plan for public comment. Not only will a fully funded program help ensure enforcement and compliance efforts, but it will also fulfill Allegheny County’s legal obligations under Title V of the Clean Air Act. Additionally, it is expected to help resolve other long-standing issues like ACHD’s air quality permit backlog. Further, the Air Quality Program must be fully funded to be prepared for the task of implementing two new major clean air rules aimed at reducing fine particulate matter and cancer-causing benzene emissions. This will be a heavy lift and will require the department to be at full staffing capacity. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.   Questions? Concerns? No worries, just hit up our communications manager Amanda Gillooly at amanda@gasp-pgh.org .

UPDATE: ACHD monitoring staff got back to GASP Wednesday afternoon with an update. The department said that multiple municipalities via 911 had been receiving an especially high volume of complaints about sulfur-like odors in the Mon Valley over this period. While the H2S concentrations were higher than usual during this time period, the instruments passed all quality assurance and quality control checks while the H2S data appeared to generally match the conditions we were receiving from the public.  It was through evaluation of the data (especially as it relates to the ratio of SO2 to H2S) that an anomaly was spotted in the SO2 concentrations over this time period.   They recommended folks take a look at the FAQ section ACHD developed, which will hopefully address those questions. https://www.alleghenycounty.us/Services/Health-Department/Air-Quality/Air-Quality-Dashboards/Hydrogen-Sulfide ACHD also noted that dates were being mulled for a subcommittee meeting, where the subject will be discussed at length. We will keep you posted on that meeting date when it's announced. --- The Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) announced in a press release Tuesday afternoon that hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) data has been removed from the website after monitoring equipment at the Liberty Monitoring Station was discovered to be not fully functional. The equipment failure impacts data from March 20, 2024, to May 14, 2024, and on May 17, 2024. ACHD stressed that only sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide data were affected during this time period. Here’s what the press release said: The issue was discovered as part of the quality assessment and quality control process of the data. A probe line became dislodged from its exterior housing on the sulfur dioxide monitor causing readings to deviate from the norm despite the instrument passing all regular instrument quality assurance checks.  No current enforcement actions are impacted by this data removal and the specific data affected during this time period will not be used in any future enforcement action(s).  To learn more please visit the Hydrogen Sulfide webpage . For hourly data from all monitoring stations, including the Liberty Monitoring Station, visit the Hourly Air Quality Data . “It’s concerning anytime there is an equipment failure that leads to data being invalidated,” GASP Executive Director Patrick Campbell said. “Given how much H2S emissions have impacted the area in general and Mon Valley residents in particular, we hope the health department releases more detailed information about what happened and what the ramifications might be.” GASP on Wednesday morning reached out to ACHD monitoring staff to glean more information and to inquire about the date of the next Air Quality Monitoring Subcommittee meeting, where these issues are generally discussed in great detail.  We will keep you posted on what we find out.

The Clean Air Act spent some time in the headlines recently thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision  to stay the EPA’s “Good Neighbor” plan, which would have required certain sources that emit oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in 23 states to reduce their emissions.     If you need a little more background info on all that,  we blogged about those specific measures and what they would mean to sources in Pennsylvania in March 2023 .   Today, we want to share an explanation of how the Supreme Court may have decided as it did. But first some legal background to put things in context…   The Clean Air Act requires that EPA set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for certain air pollutants. Once EPA sets or revises a NAAQS, the law requires that states submit State Implementation Plans (or SIPs) that provide for the “implementation, maintenance, and enforcement” of the NAAQS within their boundaries.    The Clean Air Act also contemplates that the states, not EPA, will bear primary responsibility for determining how the NAAQS will be implemented, maintained, and enforced.    However, it also requires that each SIP prohibit emissions that “contribute significantly to nonattainment in, or interfere with maintenance by, any other State” of a NAAQs; this is referred to as the Act’s “Good Neighbor Provision.”   If a state does not submit a SIP or submits a SIP that does not meet all applicable requirements, the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to issue what’s known as a Federal Implementation Plan for the state after giving the state an opportunity to submit a valid SIP.    Further, if the SIP initially submitted by a state is insufficient, EPA must give the state a chance to cure the deficiency by submitting a revised SIP, unless the deadline for doing so has passed.   Now, back to the “Good Neighbor” plan itself.   In 2022, EPA determined that some 23 states’ SIPs (including Pennsylvania’s) ran afoul of the Act’s Good Neighbor Provision because they did not adequately limit emissions from sources that contributed to high levels of ozone in downwind states (and either contributed to nonattainment of the 2015 ozone NAAQS or interfered with attainment of the 2015 ozone NAAQS).   However, rather than give those states the opportunity to revise their SIPs to fix their deficiencies, EPA imposed a single, uniform Federal Implementation Plan on all 23 of them.    That Federal Implementation Plan, which is called the “Good Neighbor” plan, required that certain control measures be used by certain sources of NOx emissions. EPA determined that those control measures were cost-effective based on the premise that they would be applied to all subject sources in all twenty-three states and made no determination that the measures would be cost-effective if applied in fewer than all of the 23 states.    The failure to make such a determination proved to be fatal to the “Good Neighbor” plan. After the plan was issued, it was successfully challenged in court by a number of states and thus did not go into effect in those states.    Consequently, the Supreme Court found that the cost-effectiveness determination that EPA used to justify the plan was no longer valid because that determination depended on the plan going into effect in all twenty-three states.    That rendered the plan itself – because it was based on an invalid determination – “arbitrary and capricious” and thus illegal and unenforceable.   “By trying to do an end run around the Clean Air Act provisions that give states the first and second cracks at imposing emission limits to attain the ozone NAAQS, EPA may have squandered an opportunity to get better controls in place, said GASP’s Senior Attorney John Baillie.    He continued:   “However, even after the Supreme Court’s decision EPA is still left with the options of making the cost-effectiveness determinations necessary to justify the plan or giving the states the opportunity to revise their SIPs to reduce their emissions of ozone-forming pollutants as necessary to protect air quality in downwind states.”   GASP continues to follow this issue closely and will keep you posted.