For Presentation at the Air Waste Management Association's 96th Annual Conference Exhibition,June 22-26,2003,San Diego,California,USA Reducing the Cost of Permitting:The EPA's Air Compliance Advisor

摘要

The EPA's Office of Air Quality and Planning Standards,Innovative Strategies and Economics Group(OAQPS/ISEG)provides economic analysis for the Office of Air and Radiation(OAR)and the majority of its air quality regulations.ISEG relies upon the recently updated EPA Air Pollution Control Cost Manual(Mussatti,2001)for these analyses.The Manual provides cost information for the installation,maintenance,and repair of a variety of air pollution control technologies.The Manual also plays a key role in economic analyses for the development of regulations and the preparation of permits,by both state and regional air pollution managers.To help increase the accessibility of the information contained in the cost control manual,ISEG supports and maintains a MS Windows based software program called the Air Compliance Advisor(ACA).The ACA incorporates the methodology presented in the cost control manual as one of its many functions.The United States Air Force originally developed the ACA in a cooperative agreement with the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program(SERDP).The ACA was designed to help sources achieve and maintain compliance with applicable regulations and permit conditions.It accomplished this by 1)providing a framework for collecting site-specific data,2)providing reliable emissions estimates in the absence of actual data,3)estimating the efficiency and cost of pollution control options,and 4)identifying applicable regulations.In its current form,the ACA can be used as an effective tool to help reduce the cost of the permitting process.The EPA's OAQPS is working toward a time when the ACA will be the foundation for all air pollution control cost estimation for permitting in the U.S.This paper provides a description of the ACA,discusses recent updates to the ACA,and outlines areas for future development.