Process Moving Forward Again Under UEP Review

Remember the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study (NAEMS), U.S. EPA’s work to generate emissions estimation methodologies (EEMs) from that data, and the 2600 Air Consent Agreements (ACA) involving almost 14,000 animal agriculture farms? After being delayed since 2010 due to lawsuits and some ill-informed objections to the use of the NAEMS data, EPA plans to use the NAEMS and other relevant data to create final EEMs for the egg laying and other animal sectors in 2019.  These EEMs are important, as holders of ACAs are protected from enforcement actions under any applicable federal air regulatory statutes until 120 days after the EEMs are finalized.

Assistant Administrator for Air, Bill Wehrum (center) with industry representatives

UEP and others in animal agriculture have several questions they would like to see addressed before EPA begins this research.  One question is how does EPA see the EEMs being used, given air emissions reporting under CERCLA and EPCRA is no longer required?  Another critical question is how suitable is the NAEMS data for creating EEMs, given that the data is about 10 years old?  Numerous changes have occurred in the layer sector since the data was collected.  To get those answers, UEP staff and representatives from the animal agriculture groups met on May 23 with the new US EPA Assistant Administrator for Air Bill Wehrum, and his staff.   UEP staff will provide updates about U.S. EPA’s efforts and the answers to these and other important questions.  Click here for background information about NAEMS, EEMs and ACA.