Great Lakes Regional Air Toxic Emissions Inventory

An Overview of Inventory Development
This unprecedented initiative was undertaken through a U.S. federal/state/provincial partnership involving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the eight Great Lakes states and the province of Ontario. The objective of this ongoing initiative is to present researchers and policy makers with detailed, basin wide data on the source and emission levels of toxic contaminants. Originally focused on 49 toxic air pollutants, the inventory database has been expanded to include 82 toxic air pollutants which have been identified as significant contributors to the contamination of the Great Lakes.

Phase 1
The first phase of this program involved the development of technical specifications for a regional database on toxic air emissions and the selection of a contractor for software development work in Phase 2.

Phase 2
This phase consisted of the development of an automated Regional Air Pollutant Inventory Development System (RAPIDS), emission factor database, and the Air Toxics Emissions Inventory Protocol for the Great Lakes Commission (Completed June 1994) for inventorying hazardous air pollutants to be used by the Great Lakes states in developing a full regional inventory. As part of Phase 2, U.S. EPA's Factor Information Retrieval System (FIRE) was used to store the emission factors and associated data quality ranking for the 49 air toxic compounds of interest to the Great Lakes states. Phase 2 work products were developed and tested by the Southwest Lake Michigan pilot states, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin in the Southwest Lake Michigan Urban Areas (Chicago, Milwaukee and Gary) Urban Area Source Inventory (Completed December 1995).

Phase 3
The U.S. EPA air Pollution Control Cooperative Agreement No. A-995353-01 was modified to include all Phase 3 work: implementing the protocol and emissions inventory software to complete a regional toxic air emissions inventory composed of the eight states and province of Ontario. This resulted in the first annual Great Lakes Regional Air Toxic Emissions Inventory.

Each Great Lakes state followed the Air Toxics Emissions Inventory Protocol for the Great Lakes Commission in developing a statewide inventory and then electronically populated the region's automated computerized inventory development system (RAPIDS), housed by the Great Lakes National Program Office of U.S. EPA. This automated client/server system facilitates the actual compilation and maintenance of the Great Lakes states' regional toxic inventory for the 49 targeted air toxic compounds and criteria pollutants. Data and reports will be accessible via the Internet.

Phase 4
The main element of this phase was to examine the feasibility of enhancing RAPIDS with a mobile source module. This effort included a scoping study that outlined needs, assessed currently available resources, and identified next steps in software development and use. In addition, an Internet World Wide Web interface was to be designed to promote ready access to the toxic emissions data contained in the regional repository.

Phase 4.5
Work continued under U.S. EPA Air Pollution Control Cooperative Agreement No. A-995353-03, to complete inventory development work. The Great Lakes Commission's list of targeted toxic air compounds was increased to 79 pollutants. The RAPIDS software enhancements were expanded to include an emission estimation module of mobile sources. With the addition of a mobile source emissions estimator to the existing point and area source emission estimators, the states and province will conduct the first regional mobile source toxic air emissions inventory. Summary toxic air emissions data from point, area, and mobile sources in the binational Great Lakes region for 1996, will again be published in several formats: in a printed final report; on the regional air toxics emissions inventory World Wide Web site on the Great Lakes Information Network (both as an electronic document and as an interactive map).

Phase 5
This phase continued to integrate the RAPIDS system into state/provincial inventory development efforts in the Great Lakes region. The main focus during this phase was to collect and process the inventory's second year of data, 1996, through conduct of a point, area, and mobile sources emissions inventory; enhance the dissemination of data and information via the World Wide Web; work toward automation of the transfer of data between the RAPIDS emissions estimation software and U.S. EPA emission factor software; and, bring selected industrial sectors into the partnership, sharing in the development and use of emission estimation techniques.

Commencement of the work on modifying the RAPIDS software to establish an automated FIRE (U.S. EPA emissions factor database) upload was completed. This task facilitates ease of distribution of emission factors throughout the region - assuring consistent use of the latest and best emission factors available from U.S, EPA. In addition, states will be able to provide state-developed emission factors back to EPA in FIRE format. The RAPIDS modifications will ease the process of data transfer from RAPIDS to other U.S. EPA programs.

Phase 6
Under Cooperative Agreement No. A995353-02-01, Phase Six builds upon existing developments through Phase Five. The RAPIDS database will be updated with 1998 point-area-mobile emissions inventory data from each of the Great Lakes states and Ontario. This data will be accessible through a Geographic Information System (GIS) that is integrated into GLIN. Currently, an Ohio Pilot GIS site has been developed (http://www.great-lakes.net/gis/online/pilot.html) to serve data layers over the Internet. This pilot area will be used as a prototype framework for serving Great Lakes regional inventory data. In addition, RAPIDS will be enhanced in the following areas: Tier Reports, AIRS data export and enhanced QA/QC reporting, software/hardware upgrades to improve user interfaces and create and increase system performance. Further work will be done to enhance the regional QA/QC efforts. This will ensure that the data meets the requirements of modelers, other researchers and policy development. In addition, these inter-state data comparisons will be used to refine the contents of each state's inventory.

Phase 7
This phase updates RAPIDS with the 1999 inventory for area, point and mobile sources for each of the Great Lakes states and Ontario. All data will be loaded to the GLC and GLIN websites and will also be accessible through GIS maps that have been integrated into GLIN. In addition, RAPIDS will be enhanced in the following areas: NET export; emission factor selection; reporting, database integrity and emissions estimator enhancements; software/hardware upgrades to improve user interfaces and increase system performance.

The project continues to refine data export models. Data export in varying formats will become critical in the use and further development of this inventory process. Continuing to inventory on an annual basis will add to and provide an archival component to toxics research on the Great Lakes. This phase will allow for trend analysis among and between years inventoried and be applied to other Great Lakes research projects requiring the same archival information.

Phase 8
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The Future
The project will also continue to build regional and binational partnerships within the Great Lakes basin both the public and private sectors. Established partners include U.S. EPA National Toxic Inventory, Chicago Cumulative Risk Initiative, Committee of States of Minnisota Mercury Reduction Initiative, and Great Primary Metals Project. These and other partners, together with the Great Lakes Commission team on the Air Toxic Emissions Inventory project, will ensure the necessary improvements in the characterization of air toxic emission in the Great Lakes region and the nation.

State efforts to populate the Great Lakes Regional Inventory system will be required over several years to develop the quality of data necessary to assess the impacts of toxic emissions to deposition on the Great Lakes. In addition, the steering committee will need to continue to meet regularly to jointly determine additions and changes to the inventory, RAPIDS software and the accompanying emissions inventory protocol.

Once several years of quality controlled/quality assured inventories of emissions from point, area, and mobile sources have been compiled, the states and U.S. EPA can begin to work singularly and in concert to define and regulate sources; evaluate control technology; establish guidelines for siting new facilities; and reduce airborne deposition of persistent toxic chemicals to the Great Lakes.

• Section 112 of the Clean Air Act
• Great Lakes Governors' Toxic Substances Control Agreement of 1986