Assisting Tribes in Submitting Data to the National Emissions Inventory, Challenges and Successes

摘要

According to information compiled by the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP), roughly 10% of the 350 federally recognized tribes in the lower 48 states of the US have completed emission inventories (EIs) for their lands. Data gathered through an effort funded by the Tribal Data Development Working Group (TDDWG) of the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP) showed that in the year 2000, 28 of the 237 federally recognized tribes in the 13-state WRAP region had completed EIs. While these numbers are small, they represent a significant increase in the number of tribal EIs since 1994. Tribes who have completed EIs use them in their own communities and in their tribal air programs. They often lack the staff time to use the data to gain representation in regional and national processes and databases. As regional planning organizations and federal agencies try to obtain tribal data to include in their data sets, they are faced with the difficulty of identifying which tribes have developed the data that they need. Once tribes are identified, approval must be obtained from tribal governments to release the data. Tribal staff may need assistance in compiling, coding and submitting the data. This paper describes an ITEP project, funded by the EPA Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards and the TDDWG, to assist tribes who have EIs in being represented in the 1999 National Emissions Inventory (NEI), version 3. ITEP created a process of gaining approval for release of data, quality checking submitted data, encoding data, and obtaining a final approval from tribal air staff for submission of data. The challenges and successes encountered in each of these steps are described in this paper.