Work Plan & Progress Report - Rhode Island Department of ...

Attachment C – Air Resources Joint Evaluation
DEM/EPA Region I PPA Discussion Meeting Notes
July 21, 2010
Meeting Participants
EPA Region I – Anne Arnold, Cynthia Greene (By Phone), Dave Conroy and Ida McDonnell
DEM Office of Air Resources (OAR) – Doug McVay, Barbara Morin, Frank Stevenson and Tom Getz
Dave started out the meeting indicating that e proposed federal EPA’s FY 2011 budget request has a
substantial increase for air program grants including both expanded air monitoring and and for
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) permitting work. He indicated that this proposal still needs to go through the
congressional budget process so he does not know when the extent of the increases will be known.
Dave indicated the region’s will be allocation for continuing Air Program Grants will go from ng
approximately $14.4M in FY 2010 to approximately -$17.3M to the New England states for the Air
Grant. This will translate into a substantial potential increase for Rhode Island. He also mentioned that
the New England states can expect even more than this from the EPA Headquarters requested $25M
requested for for the states for the GHG permitting Initiative and the $15M requested for air
monitoring equipment.
He thought that EPA’s budget could be caught up in a continuing budget resolution for some time. He
thought there was a goodreater chance of the state’s getting increased 105 funding for continuing air
program work, but the proposed GHG money may be a harder sell. He proposed having the 2011
workplan reflect last year’s’ funding levels and caveat new work that could be funded by the new
funds. Doug indicated he would be working on the state’s 2012 budget in November. It would be
difficult to budget any potential increase in funding unless the state could show we will actually be
getting the increases from EPA. He also indicated there is still difficulty in hiring new personnel; even
if there is federal funding available that would cover these expenses.
Dave indicated there is some flexibility in using federal contractors to complete projects. He did
caution that the existing federal contractors may not fit into categories of Rhode Island state needs. It
would take about 18 months to competitively bid funding new contractors at the federal level.
Doug indicated the program continues to lose personnel and does not have the ability to hire
replacements. He may be down to 20 FTE by the end of this year. He was not able to replace a person
working on RGGI activities. He was considering using the RI Technical Assistance Contract (TAC) to
fill in some of the program holes if he cannot add additional personnel. The TAC is up for renewal and
he will be requesting an air element be added to it when it goes out to bid.
At this point the meeting focused on the elements of the Priorities and Commitments List (P&C List –
Attachment A). Doug had distributed a list prior to the meeting of P&C items that were problematical.
All items not discussed today were accepted as written. All numerical references noted below will be
to the numbers listed in the attached P&C List.
Item 5: DEM can commit to this new task because the state only has a few number of large, type A
sources.
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