International Air Quality Advisory Board
SPECIAL REPORT ON
November 1998
7. COLLABORATION WITH OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Initiatives such as the Detroit/Windsor-Port Huron/Sarnia Air Quality Board Study, the British Columbia/Washington Environmental Cooperation Council, the Paso del Norte Region Study along the Rio Grande, and the Eastern North American Regional Ozone Study Area are examples of outreach activities that have led to greater involvement of the public in the issues of transboundary pollution in the United States and Canada. Significant additional progress in addressing transboundary air pollution will require active involvement of a broader segment of the public in both countries. Efforts are needed to encourage the interest and participation of other groups, including public health agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and urban groups. In addition, communication within and among groups and agencies working on multiple issues, and cooperation between the IJC and such entities as the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) and the UN Economic Commission for Europe, should be encouraged and expanded. 7.1 Commission for Environmental Cooperation In the years since its formation in 1994, the CEC has produced several reports that bear on the work of the Board and the Commission. The CEC recently released Continental Pollutant Pathways: An Agenda for Cooperation to Address Long-Range Transport of Air Pollution in North America. This report built on the work of the IJC since 1985 and came to a number of conclusions similar to those developed by the Commission. In considering both PTSs and criteria pollutants, the CEC report affirmed the following:
The second CEC report of direct interest to the Board and Commission is Long-Range Transport of Ground-Level Ozone and its Precursors: Assessment of Methods to Quantify Transboundary Transport within the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada. This report is the result of a binational collaborative project between NESCAUM and the Eastern Canada Transboundary Smog Issue Group (ECTSIG). The report gives an overview of the state of scientific knowledge on the generation and movement of ground-level ozone across the border between eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. The current ground-level ozone objective in Canada is 82 ppb averaged over one hour; the recently revised standard in the United States is 80 ppb averaged over eight hours. The report noted that:
The report also found that Canada and the United States have established a sound foundation upon which to measure airborne levels of smog and to model transport and associated mechanisms. It noted that a continuing coordinated scientific effort is needed to allow for more effective bilateral resolution of the transport problem. In this report, the CEC recommended the following:
The report also highlights the need for a long-term, regional-scale air management approach to reduce or eliminate transboundary transport of ground-level ozone. This need is consistent with the recent recommendations of the 37 U.S. states and the District of Columbia under the OTAG to address the transport of regional smog in the eastern United States, as well as several Board recommendations in this and previous reports. The third CEC report of interest is Taking Stock: North American Pollutant Releases and Transfers. This report analyzed 1994 data on releases and transfers from industrial facilities based on the pollutant release and transfer register (PRTR) in each country. It considered the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) in Canada, the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) in the United States, and the Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes (RETC) in Mexico. In the case of Mexico, available information was very limited. However, 11 of 51 U.S. company reports reviewed by the CEC did include some aggregated data on their Mexican facilities and 5 reports described corporate environmental activities in Mexico. The CEC report indicates that air emissions tend to be greater in the Great Lakes, Western, and Plains regions. Overall, air emissions represented 48 per cent of the total releases and transfers. The exception is the Eastern region, where Canadian NPRI facilities report largely surface water discharges and U.S. TRI facilities report almost exclusively air emissions. In 1994, on-site releases and off-site transfers of chemicals to treatment and disposal facilities were reported from every state and province. Total releases and transfers of chemicals by industries amounted to 1.5 billion kilograms (3.3 billion pounds). U.S. facilities accounted for 85 per cent of this total. Individual Canadian facilities, however, released on average 2.5 times more pollutants than those reported by the average U.S. facility, and the average chemical transfer in Canada was approximately double that in the United States. The pollutants considered are a mix of PTSs, carcinogenic contaminants, criteria and conventional pollutants, and others contained in individual permits. Certain permitted activities, such as disposal or treatment by underground or deep well injection, are also considered to be releases, and can be a large contributor to the total releases in some areas. The CEC report presents and analyzes a wealth of data that should be carefully considered when attempting to rank regions by chemicals released. 7.2 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe In February 1998, the UNECE released drafts of two protocols on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution that deal with heavy metals and with persistent organic pollutants. On 24 June 1998, at the fourth "Environment for Europe" Ministerial Conference in Aarhus, Denmark, the Parties to the UN/ECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution adopted the protocols to the Convention. The following countries have signed the two protocols: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, and the European Community. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia submitted a Declaration in lieu of signing. The protocol on heavy metals targets three particularly harmful substances: lead, cadmium, and mercury. Under the protocol, countries are to reduce emissions of these three metals below their 1990 levels (or an alternative year between 1985 and 1995), principally from industrial sources, combustion processes, and waste incineration. This protocol specifies best available technology (BAT) to control emissions from 11 sectors, including fossil fuel-fired utilities, the iron and steel industry, the nonferrous metals industry, and the cement industry. It also requires participating countries to phase out leaded gasoline (if they have not already done so), and may require national measures to lower heavy metal emissions from other products, such as mercury in batteries. The protocol on POPs sets stringent limits for dioxin and furan emissions from stationary sources, and lists the best available technology to control emissions from waste incineration and the metallurgical industry, including iron and steel, copper, and aluminum production. It also lists specific control techniques to reduce PAH emissions from coke production (iron and steel), anode production (aluminum), and diesel-powered mobile sources. Further, the POPs protocol bans the production and use of some products outright (aldrin, chlorodane, chlorodecone, dieldrin, endrin, hexabromobiphenyl, mirex, and toxaphene), while severely restricting the use of DDT, HCH (including lindane) and PCBs (which are scheduled for elimination at a later stage). It also includes provisions for dealing with the wastes of banned products, and obliges countries to reduce their emissions of dioxins, furans, PAHs, and HCB below 1990 levels. In addition, each protocol contains a commitment to research and development and to monitoring, calling for cooperation on emissions inventories, measuring long-range transport and deposition levels, and modeling to determine pollutant pathways. Information on heavy metal content of certain products is also to be tracked. The two protocols may set a framework for legislation to address these pollutants in countries in Europe and North America. The Board will continue to review the protocols to determine opportunities to implement the protocol measures in a North American setting. In addition, the Board will attempt to identify a European contact or contacts for ongoing collaboration and information exchange between the two regions. In a related activity, under the auspices of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), officials from 92 countries met on July 3 in Montreal, Canada, in first-round talks on the minimization and eventual elimination of POPs such as DDT and PCBs. Twelve POPs are on the UNEP list: DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, chlordane, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, toxaphene, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins and furans. This closely parallels the Criteria Pollutants list developed by the IJC's Water Quality Board for the International Joint Commission in 1985 and discussed in the Great Lakes portion of Section 5 of this report, as well as that considered by the UNECE (Table 7-1).
The Montreal meeting was the first step toward adopting a POPs treaty in the year 2000; at its conclusion, the UNEP secretariat was mandated to prepare a draft outline of the substantive elements of such a convention. This outline would be used in the drafting of the specific text for any agreement. The meeting also struck an expert group to develop science-based criteria and procedures for identifying additional POPs for future consideration. Agreement was also reached on the need to provide for technical cooperation and financial assistance to allow the participation of developing nations. The next formal meetings are scheduled for February 8 to 12, 1999. Recommendation The Board recommends that the Commission maintain a dialogue with the CEC and consider opportunities for interaction with the UNECE to ensure that their work reflects North American practices and to consider which European approaches to determining and managing air quality might be applicable in North America. |
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