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Monday, March 07, 2011
Intel Air-Quality Work Ongoing
By John Bartlit
Community Environmental Working Group
Can new ideas work faster than a labyrinth of laws to reduce air impacts from Intel in Rio Rancho? Can new methods lead to greater change than came with some 18 years of pursuing regulations?
I and some other longtime activists are sure of it.
Since 2004, the Community Environmental Working Group has used new methods to gain a notable string of changes at the Intel plant that make for better air quality.
We work to do more.
The group today has seven members — five public members and two from Intel. It holds monthly public meetings at the Corrales Senior Center. A professional facilitator, Stephen Littlejohn, and a meeting recorder are paid by Intel.
The Community Environmental Working Group's products are detailed meeting summaries, ideas about issues, actions and outcomes, all of which are on the web. Google "CEWG, Rio Rancho" and click on "Intel In Your Community."
To get the most benefit from its members' volunteered hours, the group works on ideas for reducing emissions and Intel's impact on local air quality. Some ideas lead to voluntary improvements in equipment and procedures at Intel. Credit to all concerned.
For example, maintenance of pollution controls is now done in much less time, so as to reduce unabated emissions. The amount of biocide used in cooling towers, which was smelled, has been cut by 70 percent since the working group began.
Three large changes are currently in progress:
• Major stacks (chimneys) were raised in height, to reduce significantly the peak concentrations of Intel's pollutants at ground level; stacks heights are being raised further from 30 meters to 40 meters.
• Redundant (backup) pollution controls were added and more are being installed.
• New and long-sought sampling of Intel's air emissions for crystalline silica was done in December. The testing was planned by a six-person panel – one from Intel, two from the working group and three residents of Corrales nominated by Mayor Phil Gasteyer. The three are elected village councilors Pat Clauser and John Alsobrook and Jim Tritten, who was elected the chair. These three and two more from Corrales also were volunteer witnesses of the stack sampling done at Intel during eight four-hour shifts over four days and four nights.
Test results are due soon from the analytical laboratory of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the national experts on crystalline silica.
No federal or state agency has legal authority to require any of these advances. Yet they were done.
Questions about health effects from Intel's emissions have been raised for some 18 years in many forums, including state and federal agencies, the media and public meetings. The agency whose charter makes available the most resources of dollars and public health expertise is the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
In response to a resident's petition, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry began evaluating the local health situation in 2005. A reasonable cost estimate for the agency's years of work is upward of a hundred thousand dollars.
The agency's draft report came in 2009 and is online; the final report is expected at any time. The 2009 report recommended more testing for crystalline silica, which spurred the Community Environmental Working Group's testing project described above.
Meanwhile, the EPA came to Intel to investigate its air permit and compliance with its provisions. The report last fall found one area of noncompliance and eight "areas of concern."
The working group knows the value and the problems in laws, tiers of national rule-making and tax-funded agencies. We deal in ideas and dialogue among diverse interests, including leaders of Intel, that yield more direct ways to better air.
And we keep on.
John Bartlit has been a volunteer advocate for cleaner air in New Mexico for 42 years.
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