Brock Lebaron 2

Brock Lebaron 2

Brock Lebaron: Well the air quality issue in the Uintah Basin is really about wintertime ozone. And ozone is normally considered a summertime pollutant. It's associated with large, urban areas. It's associated with emissions that come from automobiles. But in the Uintah Basin we have pretty much the opposite of that. We've got ozone occurring in the middle of the winter. So that's what makes it really unique. [00:01:52] And we don't fully understand why that's happening.

Brock Lebaron: Well ozone is -- it's not emitted directly into the atmosphere from any source. It's actually created in the atmosphere. And it's created from the reaction of oxides of nitrogen and what we call volatile organic compounds or VOCs. And these react in the presence of sunlight. Sunlight drives the reaction. And that's why it's normally thought of as a summertime pollutant. Because that's when the sun's highest and the days are the longest. But that's not what we have in the Basin. We've got a unique situation out there that's driving this chemistry. It's happening only when there's snow on the ground and only when we have a tight temperature inversion.

So those are the specific conditions we need. So it's quite episodic. It doesn't happen every day or every year.

Brock Lebaron: So because the ozone is forming under an inversion, mostly at the ground. It's really impacting the locals. And it's not transported in or transported out. So it's the people who're actually living in the Basin that are affected the most. And the people in the small towns of Roosevelt, Vernal, Duchesne as well as the workers that are out in the field taking care of this production equipment.

And of course the folks who're most affected are the elderly, the young, people with breathing conditions such as asthma. They're the ones that are going to have the toughest time during these episodes.

Brock Lebaron: The oil and gas industry supports probably 80 percent of the economy in the basin. So it's really important that as we develop strategies to reduce ozone that those strategies also take into consideration their impact on the economy.

Brock Lebaron: The basin is primarily a rural area. There is some agriculture. But it's almost all energy extraction. I mean that's the economic engine for the basin. And that's really why this is such an important issue to the state, to the governor.

To understand what's going on with air quality and to make sure that that doesn't get in the way of economic development out there?

Brock Lebaron: Well the Basin is not only chemically complex, it's also jurisdictionally complex. You have a lot of tribal lands. There's a reservation out there. There's a surrounding area called Indian Country. And that area, the air jurisdiction goes to EPA and to the tribe.

It's important that as we're developing control strategies, that they're consistent across the Basin. Because the air quality problem, the ozone problem, it's Basin-wide. So it's really important that all the regulatory agencies, the State, the EPA, the BLM, and the tribes all work together in developing sort of a holistic approach for solving the problems out there.

Brock Lebaron: Attainment is really a term given to an area that's meeting federal air quality health standards. If your monitoring data shows that you're not meeting that, you're classified as non-attainment. Now in the Basin, they're actually classified as unclassifiable. Because EPA does not have enough regulatory data, long enough time period, to really make a decision as to whether the area's really non-attainment or attainment at this time.

Brock Lebaron: So the producers have been quite responsible. I mean they've been involved from the time that this ozone issue was first discovered a few years back. I think the producers recognize what's at stake here for their business. And that it is a health problem.

So some of the things -- they've been working to educate their employees about the health benefits as well as the implications for business. They've provided access to their facilities for researchers that are out there during these last few winters looking at the problem. And in fact they've actually helped support some of the funding that's gone to these researchers as well.

Now Newfield has gone a long ways in trying to get trucks off the road by putting in pipeline gathering systems so we cannot have a lot of automobile emissions to bring the liquids into a central processing facility. That goes a long ways to reducing emissions. And then also the producers are responding to new oil and gas regulations. There are some new source performance standards that the federal government's put out for oil and gas.

And over the next few years, you'll be seeing a lot of reductions in VOC emissions as a result of those regulations. So I suspect that we should be seeing some improvement in ozone as well.

Brock Lebaron:One of the things we're trying to do is get the producers to actually step up and make reductions prior to going in non-attainment. And the reason for that is that the Clean Air Act was really -- it was written some 20 years or more ago based on an understanding of how ozone’s formed. The understanding at the current time.

Brock Lebaron: I think it's important to understand that the Clean Air Act is what's driving the air quality process. And for ozone, that Clean Air Act was drafted 20-plus years ago based on an understanding of how ozone was formed at the time. And at the time, it was thought to be an urban pollutant. We called it smog essentially.

It was driven by sunlight, and emissions from automobiles, and that sort of thing. And it built in prescriptive approaches to fixing the problem based on that understanding. And since that's not the situation we have in the Uintah Basin right now, if we go into non-attainment and have to implement those strategies, that could be -- it might be very non-effective. It could even be counterproductive to solving the ozone problem.

We want to avoid that if at all possible.

Brock Lebaron: One of the things that's happening right now is we're trying to get probably our third study out in the Uintah Basing going this winter. And we'll have researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.

Brock Lebaron:What we're doing right now is we're gearing up for our third wintertime study out in the Basin. As I mentioned, the formation processes are quite unique. They're very different than you would find in an urban area. And it's very important to understand exactly what those chemical pathways that lead to ozone formation are because that's how we're going to develop our mitigation strategies.

We have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, coming back in with very specialized equipment along with researchers from a number of universities that have expertise in this area. And they'll be in the field this winter again.

We've learned a lot over the last three winters really. And what we're doing this winter is really zeroing in on some very specific questions about reactive components to ozone formation that are again unique to the Basin.

Brock Lebaron:The emissions inventory for what we call precursors to ozone formation are almost all contributed really from the oil and gas industry. I mean we probably have 90 plus percent of the VOCs coming from oil and gas and probably about 60 percent of the NOCs?. But it's important to understand it's not just the total quantity. It's important to understand which VOCs.

And it's important to understand the distribution in the atmosphere of those precursors because they need to get together to react to form ozone.

Brock Lebaron: I think it's important to understand that right now everything's been working in a very cooperative nature, a very proactive nature, a very voluntary nature.

And we'd like to keep it that way if at all possible. And I think all the regulators are working together. We're working well with the tribe, and the EPA, and the BLM. I think that's been good. And on the scientific side, I think we've got a consortium of researchers that are -- they're really the best in the world at this kind of research. And they're doing a good job.

And I think they're getting pretty close to having some good answers about what we can do to solve the problem out there.

Brock Lebaron: Again the Uintah Basin probably has 70 percent of the state's oil and gas production. So it is a driver for the state's economy from an energy standpoint. So that's why the governor is very interested in making sure that this air quality issue is resolved. Again it's important for the economy, but we don't want to forget it's also important for people's health out there. I mean there're a lot of locals breathing these high levels of ozone.

Brock Lebaron: So in the wintertime, it's important to understand that the emissions are locked down under an inversion. They're very local. It's like a bowl that is capped. And it's a mixing bowl. So that chemistry is important. But in the summertime, it's a little bit different issue. I mean we have ozone out there. It's not exceeding the standard like the wintertime.

Brock Lebaron: So again as I mentioned, ozone's typically a summertime pollutant. But out there right now, we don’t have too much problem. I mean we're talking about high levels in the wintertime. But a situation we're sort of getting into in not only the rural parts of the state of Utah but also a lot of the rural areas of the Intermountain West is we're finding EPA slowly ratcheting the standard down for ozone. And that’s getting ready to occur again.

They try and do this every five years. And EPA said, “We think we should lower the ozone standard.” At the same time, the background levels of ozone, the ozone that's transported into the area, the ozone that's contributed from stratospheric ozone intrusion, forest fires, that sort of thing is gradually bumping up. And we know in the Intermountain West with its higher elevation, that those things are even more important.

So what we're finding is the levels of ozone that are meeting the health standard are bumping into the background levels and it's becoming very hard for areas -- or will be if they lower the standard, for these rural areas to stay out of non-attainment. And what would happen if we went into non-attainment is they would of course have to put together a plan to show how they could get back into attainment. That's going to be very difficult when they locally are not contributing to the problem.

Brock Lebaron: Well for example, we know from monitoring data even in national parks you could have values that could hit the current standard. And we could have a very serious problem if the standard is lowered. Again, if that area can't do anything about stratospheric ozone intrusion or elevated levels that are being transported across the Pacific, even from Asia, these values are being monitored to be gradually increasing every year.

There's going to be consequences for the locals because of that. So it’s problematic.

Brock Lebaron: Well it's a little difficult to see in the monitoring data progress being made right now with those under the Basin. Primarily because of a couple things. I mean one, there's a lot of inter annual variability from year to year. For example in 2011, we had very high ozone values. There was a lot of snow on the ground. We had a lot of temperature inversions and the ozone levels were high. In 2012 by contrast, the levels were very low. I mean we had no snow in the basin. And then in 2013, last winter, levels were high again. Lots of snow. Year to year, it's quite variable. And second reason is because we just don't have a long enough data baseline to sort of average out that inter annual variability.

Like on the Wasatch Front, we've been monitoring for 20-plus years. So we can establish that things are improving. Even though there's variability. But I think because of the reductions that producers have been making, because of new federal requirements for oil and gas development, I know VOCs are supposed to be cut by quite a large percentage. And I suspect over the next few years, we'll see some improvements in ozone as well.

Brock Lebaron: The Division of Air Quality, we probably have about 100 staff that work on various things related to air quality. We monitor as everyone knows. We have probably 25 monitors around the state. Mostly along the Wasatch Front where the population is located. But also in rural areas as well. We have a permitting branch that makes sure that sources that are going to put out any kind of air contaminants have a permit to make sure they are operating as controlled as possible, and to make sure that they are not going to cause any violations of National Ambient Air Quality standards.

Then we have a compliance branch, which they go out and make sure that the conditions of the permits are enforced and that sort of thing. And then we also have a planning branch. And the purpose of the planning branch really is to -- if we run into problems, or we see that our monitoring is in fact over the standard, or we have an air quality problem, they will write the plan. We call it a State Implementation Plan or SIP. That will describe and outline how we're going to get that area back into meeting the standard.

Brock Lebaron: Well the monitoring stations are essentially a big enclosed trailer. They have to have maintained a certain temperature. So they're heated. They're cooled. And they have very sophisticated instrumentation that we have to run to look at different pollutants, what we call a criteria of pollutants. And pollutant has its own instrumentation.

And so these -- the staff go out and make sure that the instruments are calibrated. They make sure that they're operating and functioning correctly. And then they collect the data. And that data is reported by the division to the EPA. And we also publish it online for a number of monitors. Each air shed really has a monitor that we report real time to our website. So anyone who's interested in real-time data can go to -- just Google Utah air quality.

And they can find that data pretty easily.

Brock Lebaron: I guess the only other thing I would add is that the situation in the Basin, air quality-wise, under the right meteorological conditions, snow-covered ground, temperature inversion, the values can be very high. I mean they can reach twice the National Ambient Air standard. They're might higher than the summertime ozone values that we would see along the Wasatch Front. But it's also important to remember that they're very episodic.

They're not occurring every day. They're only occurring when we have these kinds of meteorological conditions. So that's an important aspect that's unique to ozone in the Uintah Basin.

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