By Christopher Eshleman

Published Sunday, September 21, 2008

FAIRBANKS — Fairbanks still has a few years before it sees air pollution-prevention rules that, public officials say, could impact the way borough residents heat homes, operate industry and plan construction projects across the community.

But while those measures have yet to be drafted, government agencies already disagree whether the new rules should eventually apply to rural areas, neighborhoods and small towns well outside the city limits.Local mayors and other members from a seven-person transportation planning group last week asked the federal government for an extra year to study the air pollution problem. The request comes as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to tell pollution-prone communities — including Fairbanks and six other cities in the agency’s northwest region, which includes Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington state — exactly where they should focus future prevention measures, measures those communities’ local agencies need to draft within the next three years.

“Setting an overly large boundary without meaningful data may undermine public support for the hard choices that the community will face in the future to correct and control this health problem,” Steve Titus, a state transportation director who serves as chairman of the planning organization, wrote in the official request Wednesday.

The air pollution common in Fairbanks — particulate pollution, which peaks during cold winter days — consists of airborne particles of dust and soot. The pollution is generated by inefficient combustion, and health officials say exposure to it carries long-term health risks including chronic bronchitis, decreased lung function and, for people with heart or lung disease, shorter lives.

Air-quality specialists cite a number of potential sources including inefficient wood stoves, traditional fuel heaters and — possibly the dirtiest — outdoor wood boilers, which burn wood to heat water-based household heating systems.

Despite that insight, the transportation group questioned the EPA’s suggestion that local governments should monitor air pollution emissions in Salcha, Two Rivers, Eielson Air Force Base and other areas miles away from the city of Fairbanks.

It asked the agency to wait until it completes a $2.6 million study aimed at nailing down the source of the pollution.

North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson said he was frustrated to hear that federal officials want to draw Fairbanks’ pollution-prevention boundaries before that study is complete.

“I don’t think we should be spending money on projects and be told our money is no good,” he said.

Particulate pollution

The federal government has for years regulated particulate pollution, which results from inefficient combustion. Federal officials tightened pollution standards in 2006, a move that left local leaders scrambling to wrap their arms around air quality problems and possible options.

Public officials will almost certainly need to regulate the more urban, populated areas of Fairbanks North Star Borough, including Fairbanks and North Pole. The question now revolves around whether it will need to keep its thumb on air pollution coming from homes, businesses and construction projects in and around rural areas like Fox, Salcha and Two Rivers.

Alice Edwards, who directs the state’s Division of Air Quality, said federal officials had originally sought to identify the entire 7,350-square-mile borough — an area the size of Connecticut — as the problem spot.

Local officials recommended a far smaller boundary, one that might have excluded almost everything outside the Fairbanks city limits. But Gina Bonifacino, an air quality planner with the Environmental Protection Agency’s office in Seattle, said her agency felt potential pollution sources existed outside those proposed borders and drew its own, a decision that followed a look at transportation patterns, community growth trends and population density.

Edwards told local leaders Wednesday that state officials are pressing the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its proposed boundaries.

“We have a lot of work to do to see if we can whittle down this area,” she said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is set to publish its pollution-prevention boundaries for Fairbanks in December, Bonifacino said. After that, the government will require local officials to submit a pollution-prevention plan in 2012 and meet the plan’s goals two years later, Bonifacino said.

Glenn Miller, who directs the Fairbanks North Star Borough’s Air Quality Division, said the broad map proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency left local officials wondering two things: How much do neighborhoods in rural areas really contribute to air pollution, and, even if they do contribute significantly, how could local agencies possibly enforce pollution-prevention measures out there?

“We certainly want to protect the citizens that live there” from air pollution, Miller said. But to include areas that might not contribute significantly to that pollution, he said, could dilute prevention specialists’ ability to effectively monitor the larger problem.

Miller said it’s too early to know what type of pollution-prevention measures will emerge. But local officials have some clues, and he pointed to communities outside Alaska that have banned the use of older, less-efficient wood stoves and set up exchange programs that encourage people to trade those stoves in for newer, cleaner heating systems.

Borough Mayor Jim Whitaker told other public officials Wednesday that local leaders stand little chance of fighting their way out of the federal government’s nationwide pollution-prevention effort.

“The fact is, we can’t get out of this,” he said.

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