Posted: 17 November 2005 at 5:29pm | IP Logged

For areas that become new non-attainment areas during the design process, does SAFETEA-LU require an analysis be done for the new non-attainment pollutant-hot-spot analysis if it's PM?

rosssd@co.mecklenburg.nc.us
Mecklenburg County Air Quality, NC

Posted: 06 December 2005 at 11:40am | IP Logged

Effective April 5, 2005, EPA designated 39 areas as nonattainment for the PM2.5 air quality standard. Under Section 176(c)(6) of the Clean Air Act, transportation conformity will apply in those areas on April 5, 2006. This provision of the Clean Air Act and this deadline were not effected by the enactment of SAFETEA-LU.

In PM2.5 nonattainment areas, conformity determinations on metropolitan transportation plans and TIPs must be made by FHWA/FTA by April 5, 2006, or the restrictions of a conformity lapse will apply.

This deadline also affects project authorizations and approvals. After April 5, 2006, project-level conformity determinations must be made prior to final NEPA approval (i.e., ROD, FONSI, or CE) and/or project authorizations for non-exempt projects or project phases. This applies to project authorizations made after April 5, 2006, even if the final NEPA approval was before April 5, 2006.

Project level conformity determinations will require that the project come from a conforming transportation plan/TIP or associated PM2.5 regional emissions analysis. In addition, a PM2.5 hot-spot analysis may be required. However, EPA has yet to finalize PM2.5 hot-spot requirements, and may not do so until March 31, 2005. Therefore, although project-level conformity determinations will be required after April 5, 2006, we may not know the final criteria and requirements for PM2.5 hot-spot analysis until only a few days before. DOT and EPA will be discussing if we can offer further project level guidance prior to the release of the final rule.

State DOTs, MPOs, and project sponsors may therefore wish to closely examine their project schedules in PM2.5 nonattainment areas. Project schedules may warrant adjustment to either advance the scheduled approval or authorization to before April 5, 2006, or to allow additional time to allow for the project-level analysis.

Posted: 07 December 2005 at 4:28pm | IP Logged

Regional analysis for PM2.5 is probably less of a problem than hot-spot. We already know pretty much what has to be in the regional analysis, and most affected areas are well on their way to meeting the regional conformity requirement on time. Hot spot analysis is another matter, especially if EPA doesn't speak in some reliable form within the next month or so regarding favored or required standards.

1) What about projects that are exempt from regional analysis but normally need a hot spot finding (40 CFR 93.127)? There are a lot of such projects (channelization, signals, etc.) but because of the regional analysis exemption they are not all listed in the RTP/TIP so they may be hard to identify on short notice.

2) EPA-won't-talk-so-check-your-project-schedules isn't really good enough. Especially if the regional-exemption-only projects noted in 1) are included, there may be hundreds of projects in States and metro areas that need PM2.5 hot spot analyses retrofitted at the construction funding approval stage in just the first couple of months. Then of course there are all the environmental actions (including many CEs) that will be hit at the last moment with work that cannot be adequately planned and resourced without knowledge of the requirements. It's unrealistic to expect that more than a small fraction of such projects can be accelerated to come in before the deadline, and FHWA in the past has resisted doing accelerated actions of that type - in fact, I think there's an old memo between DOT and EPA that specifies that they will not accelerate actions to avoid conformity lapses, which may apply here (does it?). The volume of work needed is far beyond what can be accomplished with any reasonable staffing given the current EPA schedule unless the study requirements are truly trivial. That's a program-killer that needs to be fixed, fast.

April-June is the last quarter of many State and local agencies' fiscal years, so major effects on project delivery during that time can kill projects, not just delay them. April-June is also about the last chance to get contracts going for work during the summer - delay of even a month can mean a year's delay for construction if it can't be started in time for completion by Fall, which can trigger a real cascade of other effects if certain permits are required.