NMED News:SANTA FE ― The Four Corners Air Quality Group will meet Monday, Nov. 9 and Tuesday, Nov. 10 at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., to report upon and discuss regional air quality issues.
The States of New Mexico and Colorado, with their partners, sponsor the Four Corners Air Quality Group to support the ongoing effort of managing air quality in the Four Corners area.
Ozone standards, which were recently revised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA); EPA’s recently released Clean Power Plan; and visibility in the Four Corners region are topics slated for Monday’s meeting.
The more technical topics of sulfur dioxide standards, tribal program updates, and emissions inventory status will be covered on Tuesday morning.
The meeting begins at 1 p.m., Monday when State of New Mexico, Colorado, and other airquality agency officials will provide opening remarks, followed by a series of presentations.
At 4:30 p.m. there will be an open house and poster sessions enabling one-on-one dialogue between the interested public and officials in attendance from the states of New Mexico and Colorado; the Southern Ute Indian Tribe; the Navajo Nation; the EPA, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.
Although there will be discussion of EPA’s methane strategy for the oil and gas industry on Monday, the Four Corners Air Quality Group will not address the recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration methane study, as those results are not yet available.
Contact Mark Jones, New Mexico Environment Department, at 505.566.9746 for further information or visit http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/ to access previous meeting summaries and other resources.
Originally convened as the Four Corners Air Quality Task Force a decade ago, the group has met regularly since to provide updates on a wide range of air quality topics relevant to the region. The Four Corners Air Quality Group grew from a two-year effort that the states initiated to work on the air quality issues and challenges facing the Four Corners region. That effort involved the convening of a broadly representative group of people coming from industry, local government, public interest groups and community citizens.
