Schedule Announced for Draft Air Emissions Factors

July 25, 2018

U.S. EPA announced the schedule for publishing the draft air emissions factors (emissions estimation methodologies or EEMs) for poultry and livestock facilities earlier this month.  Draft EEMs for ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and particulate matter for layer and broiler facilities will be issued for comment in February 2020.  Swine EEMs for these substances will be issued in September of 2019 followed by dairy EEMs scheduled for July 2020.  Draft EEMs for volatile organic compounds for all these species will be issued in November 2020.  The complete schedule and related information can be found here.

EPA has substantively stepped up its efforts to finish air emissions factors for poultry and livestock operations using data from the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study (NAEMS) and other suitable data from quality-controlled studies.  Additional data, other than the NAEMS data, will be needed because the NAEMS data was collected 10 years ago.  While some of this data is still applicable for the style of housing and manure management systems in use today,  it does not represent many of the newer housing and manure management systems that have been adopted and will be adopted over the next several years.

As reported in June, UEP discussed this data applicability and other questions with EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Air, Bill Wehrum and his staff at a meeting in D.C. in May with other livestock and poultry groups.   As a follow-up to the May meeting, UEP will be meeting with EPA air emissions technical and policy staff in August for in-depth discussions about NAEMS and other data available that can be used to properly characterize air emissions from layer facilities.  Professor Hongwei Xin of Iowa State University will be participating with UEP in these discussions.  While the EEMs for layers will not be published until February 2020, EPA will begin working on these EEMs shortly.  UEP wants to ensure egg producers are accurately represented throughout this process.