Staff Presents Implementation Plan for New Voluntary Wood Burning Program and Latest Draft Climate Action Plan to NRC

1) On September 15th 2009, City Council adopted a resolution establishing voluntary “no burn” days for the curtailment of all wood burning devices to protect public health from wood burning smoke emissions. From November 2009 through February 2010, “No Burn” days are established when PM2.5 is projected to be 25 micrograms per cubic meter or higher as forecasted by the Yolo Solano Air Quality Management District (YSAQMD). Forecasted “No Burn” days will be posted on both the City’s main webpage and YSAQMD’s webpage the day before the anticipated voluntary “No-Burn” day. Residents who subscribe to the free “EnviroFlash” email will receive “don’t light tonight” advisories, air quality forecasts, and health advisories during exceptional events. Staff reported that the voluntary program was also promoted with a one-time ad in the Enterprise run by the YSAQMD as well as a 1-page slide that will run on the City cable channel.

2) Dr. Cahill of the UCD DELTA Group has offered to operate a continuous monitoring station on UC Davis campus and compare equipment measurements to two new field samplers placed by Yolo Solano Air Quality Management District staff at a site in Village Homes in West Davis and in East Davis. These sites were chosen because they provide security, electricity and air quality concerns were logged from these neighborhoods during the last burn season. Another PM2.5 and weather monitoring station is maintained by the California Air Resources Board west of Hwy 13 on UC Davis property.

3) The City and YSAQMD staff will also record all resident air quality concerns and complaints reported to them over the upcoming wood burning season. The data fields to be collected are name, phone or email, location, wind (speed/direction), observation date/time, location, smoke (visible/smell), and possible source. Announcements advising that residents can register their complaints or concerns with wood smoke in the air will be via a 2 line-announcement that will appear on the city’s utility bills as well as through the city’s website.

Commission Discussion

During the ensuing discussion about monitor location by the Commission, Commissioner Dr. Mark Lubell clarified that the new monitors would be fixed monitors and not mobile. He then commented that the results will thus not be able to determine potential excessive exposure by residents to neighborhood wood smoke “hot spots” unless the monitors were fortuitously placed downwind of a consistent wood burner. He further noted that the monitors will otherwise only provide “average” neighborhood PM2.5 concentration which was still “better than nothing”. Commissioner Adrienne Kandel stated that this did not address the predominate issue of nearest neighbor impacts from wood burning which is the exposure that residents receive who are next door or up to 3-4 homes downwind from the wood burner.

A discussion then followed about the likelihood of a sufficient number of complaints being generated by the city staff’s outreach program to appropriately perform the correlation studies. Commissioner Fetterly suggested additional more extensive efforts would be needed to make people aware of the importance of their registering their complaints with the city or YSAQMD. Commissioner Lubell noted that it was important that such outreach efforts be consistent throughout the season so as to not bias the results by making people more aware of the program and ability to register complaints during some portion of the wood burning season than at other times. Commissioner Kandel suggested a utility bill insert would be more likely to attract the attention of residents instead of an announcement on the city’s utility bill itself. She also stated that an effort should be made to inform citizens that the intent and purpose of making and registering their complaints is to provide a database to be used to more adequately predict when it is safe or unsafe to burn in the future. Staff noted that they essentially had no budget in which to implement a more extensive outreach program and they were trying to maximize the effectiveness of the outreach given their lack of resources.

Commissioner Kandel recommended that the results of this study should be thoroughly statistically analyzed and quantitatively evaluated and discussed to ensure all of the available information is properly obtained from the study data. She suggested that if city staff did not have the time or resources available to perform such an analysis that it was likely that a pool of citizen statisticians might be an available as a citizens’ advisory committee to advise the NRC of their analysis and the quantitative implications of the study results.

Commission Actions

Following these discussions, staff then asked the Commission to accept staff’s recommendations for monitoring site locations. A motion was made and unanimously accepted to accept staff’s recommendations for placement of the two monitors installed and maintained by the YSAQMD but to request that Dr. Cahill’s monitor instead be placed in the core area of the city instead of on the UCD campus. It was suggested that it would be more beneficial to residents to monitor PM2.5 concentrations in the core area of the city because it has historically been thought to have higher wood smoke concentrations than in other parts of the city

Mitch Sears, the staff Sustainability Programs Manager, then presented the current draft of the City Climate Action Plan to the Commission for comments. He noted that little progress toward completion of the final plan had been made in recent months because of staff time otherwise spent in submitting several bids for funding for federal stimulus projects, preparing an RFP for 1.5 MW alternative energy purchase contract, and working on the proposed solar and energy conservation financing plan that is itself part of the Climate Action Plan. He requested comments from the Commission on the contents of the draft Plan and asked for a sense of the Commission as to what they would like to see included as the Plan is finalized. He indicated that he hoped to get final NRC acceptance of the Plan at the NRC November meeting in anticipation of having the final draft of the Plan present to the Council during the currently tentatively planned December 15 Joint Council-NRC meeting.

Commission Discussion

Chairperson Jennifer Holman commented that it would be useful to see the costs associated with each of the proposed options clearly spelled out as well as the anticipated energy savings derived for each element of the draft Plan. Commissioner Dean Newberry recommended that the priorities for each element of the plan be made and discussed in terms of immediately-available energy savings that might result. Commissioner Lubell recommended that a discussion of the possible impact of carbon offset credits be included in the final plan and

Commissioner Kandel suggested that a Climate Action Program be permanently institutionalized in Davis so that ongoing progress in meeting the objectives of the Plan can be periodically evaluated and assessed in the future. A public comment was made suggesting that identifiable benchmarks, deadlines, and/or projected timetables be established for each element of the plan as necessary to properly and quantitatively evaluate the progress made toward achieving each actionable item in the Climate Action Plan.

Staff Actions

Mitch Sears indicated that he would evaluate the suggestions and comments and incorporate as many as possible in the final draft submitted back to the NRC subject to staff’s time limitations. Staff suggested that the planned December joint Council-NRC meeting might have to be delayed to accommodate the updating process given the upcoming holiday season and restrictions thus imposed on available meeting dates in late December.

Long Term Calendar

Chairperson Holman noted that San Jose, as well as many other government entities in the US and around the world, had recently implemented a partial ban on plastic bags and requested that the issue of restricting plastic bags use and/or availability in Davis be put on the NRC’s long range calendar. Commissioner Chas Ehrlich requested that staff agendize the issue of leaf blower use in the city noting that it had previously been on the agenda for a prior meeting but had not been rescheduled to be heard. Earlier a public commenter requested that the issue of containerized green waste be considered by the NRC. The issue was briefly discussed and there was a consensus for the need for future evaluation but the matter was not placed on the long range calendar.