| Notes | 'These two new monitoring technologies partially addressed and amplified fenceline communities’ long-standing criticisms of the way environmental regulators measured air quality. Monitoring sites established by state and regional agencies to assess compliance with the Clean Air Act are set up away from large sources like refineries with the aim of getting data that would represent the airshed as a whole. And the little monitoring that was being done by agencies in fenceline communities was conducted only after residents complained about odors, flaring, or other releases from neighboring facilities—and always, residents charged, many hours after the worst pollution had dissipated. Fenceline communities thus were left without information about what they were breathing.\n \nThe specifics of the air monitoring required by the two rules are very different: the BAAQMD rule calls for real-time monitoring of a number of chemicals, whereas the EPA rule requires benzene sampling that triggers remedial action if measured concentrations exceed a specified level. Although the very inclusion of monitoring in these rules is a victory for fenceline communities, arguably neither is up to the task of protecting air quality and, ultimately, residents’ health. Looking back to the story of how the Fenceline was set up and how it has evolved points to two important ways that the rules should be strengthened—if not now, then in subsequent iterations: by creating better mechanisms for presenting, interpreting, and using monitoring data, and by including neighboring communities in the design and operational oversight of fenceline monitors.\n..... During the same period, the EPA was revising its own refinery regulations. The rule it put out for comment in May 2014 and adopted in September 2015 also calls for ambient air monitoring at refinery fencelines, but its focus is on controlling “fugitive emissions” from leaky valves and seals. Real-time, open-path monitoring is among the approaches the rule considers, but it concludes that fenceline monitoring with open-path UV systems, although technically feasible, is cost prohibitive. The rule opts instead for passive sampling for just one chemical, benzene, with each sample representing a two-week period. Environmental justice activists, including those associated with Bay area refinery communities, have criticized the proposed requirements for their limited scope and their poor temporal resolution, both clear weaknesses of the strategy relative to the kind of fenceline systems the BAAQMD rule calls for.\nBut the EPA’s monitoring scheme has an additional feature that highlights weaknesses in BAAQMD’s rule. While the Bay area rule focuses exclusively on generating and providing air quality information, the EPA’s rule lays out a plan for assessing and acting on the air data generated. Data from two-week samples are to be compiled into an annual average, which in turn is compared to a “concentration action level.” If the average benzene concentration at a refinery’s fenceline exceeds nine micrograms per meter cubed for any 26-sample (52-week) period, the refinery must take action to reduce its fugitive emissions.\n \nCo-owner Don Gamiles, a physicist and entrepreneur with a passion for open-path monitors like the ones deployed in the Fenceline, saw in fenceline communities an important new market: although community groups could not afford to purchase and maintain the sophisticated instruments, organized communities could still create business for Gamiles by compelling companies to agree to monitoring.\n \n \nMODEL FOR AB 617:\nMore effective government regulations would set up the design of fenceline and community monitoring systems as a collaborative process from the start—one in which community members, industry, contractors, and regulators have the opportunity to learn from each other. In the Bay area case, for example, this could be accomplished through monitoring guidelines that require community members to sign onto a monitoring plan before it can be approved. Regulators could further facilitate these collaborations by offering to lend their expertise in both air monitoring and community collaborations; both BAAQMD and the EPA can now point to projects that have been quite successful in the latter regard.\n - kecox'
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