Treasure Valley Partnership
Meeting Minutes
August 27, 2007

Mayor Margie Watson opened the meeting and welcomed everyone to Parma, Idaho. She stated that the City of Parma is drastically changing as a result of growth. Margie mentioned they are doing four blocks of downtown revitalization and have obtained a couple of grants to help with the work. In addition, they are also working on a grant to improve the airport infrastructure.

Bill introduced Leonard Herr with the Idaho Dept. of Environmental Quality. Leonard started by saying that the fires with large air quality impacts are up near McCall and east and were not heavily impacting the Treasure Valley. He did say that there were numerous air quality alerts due to smoke but that the impact of the fires this summer have not been as hard on the Treasure Valley air quality as the previous summer.

We have had a lot of smoke in the valley, but it has mostly been elevated. So we have not been getting some high numbers due to the smoke. With that said, he indicated the public perception is that this year is substantially worse than in the past. He did indicate they have issued more air quality alerts this year. And there are a couple of reasons for that. Reason # 1 is that the Fed’s lowered the standards for this year. Therefore, the air quality hasn’t been worse, just the standard by which it is measured has.

Reason #2 – They started measuring Ozone back in 2000. With influences on air quality, ozone is the one that is tied specifically to population. As the population as grown, the ozone measurements have gone up.

He started a discussion around how close is the treasure valley getting for non-attainment for air quality? Leonard mentioned that there are several things to look at. One is Particulate and the other is Ozone. Particulate worries tend to be in the winter and Ozone worries tend to be in the summer. Ozone and Particulate attainment measurements are based on three year running averages.

If we looked at the years 04, 05 and 06 the valley was real close to non-attainment for particulate. In 2004, we had a real bad year for air quality. Because of the way the rolling average works, we now have some breathing room because the numbers in 2004 skewed our three-year measurement because it was so much higher than we have seen lately.

For Ozone, the numbers have been getting worse. And if we can avoid a bad year we should be ok under the attainment number of 80. The Treasure Valley is measuring at a 77 currently. However, it is contemplated that the Feds are in the process of lowering the attainment number and this could cause us some problems. In addition, a couple of bad weather years would also throw some complications to meeting attainment.

The things we can do now include; control measures and early action compacts. The work that has been done with the Treasure Valley Air Quality Coalition would help our cause if we reach non-attainment.

Nate Mitchell asked what non-attainment would do to title 5 permit holders? Leonard indicated it would make it more difficult to get new title 5 permits and to modify existing permits.

Matt Beebe asked what we should be looking at as far as the recommendations of the Air Quality Council. Leonard indicated that instituting recommendations would be slow, but we would probably start with controls of volatile organic compounds (vapors). Controlling fumes from underground storage tanks, and emissions testing controls for the transportation industry would be some of the first control measures.

John Evans asked how big an issue the Canyon County Emissions Testing is? Leonard indicated, as far as control measures go, this has a big impact.

Margie Watson asked about Covered Loads. Leonard stated that the Air Quality Council has been talking about this issue. One of their recommendations is, uniform dust control ordinances. The State has a dust control law, but there is no enforcement. Leonard indicated they are real interested in seeing uniform Covered Load ordinances in the Treasure Valley. He stated that Covered Load issues are the number one complaint regarding air quality.

Ed Burnett started his discussion on Mosquito abatement by passing out some up-to-date statistics put out by the Department of Health & Welfare on the West Nile Virus. The reports showed five human cases in Ada County and seven in Canyon County. Compared to last year at this time, we are significantly lower in the cases of West Nile Virus. He indicated that in Canyon County they have two surveillance teams that set out mosquito traps and monitors them. Once the traps are retrieved, they have had the ability to test the results of trapping for West Nile. Ed stated that this has helped tremendously because they have a faster turnaround to finding a positive test and responding with spraying if necessary, all because they are doing their own testing.

Ed indicated that one of the big problems last years was that the Canyon County Mosquito Abatement District was not county wide. They were able to work with the Canyon County Commission to create an interim district that helped them get broader coverage and better response to the problem.

Christian Nafzger provided a report on the progress of the SAUSA Project. He showed a chart indicating the number of gun related crimes. He showed that there were 24 indicted defendants and seven convicted/sentenced defendants. These defendants are serving sentences from seven to 48 months in Federal Prison.

He mentioned they would be holding press conference on September 4th. He laid out an anticipated agenda for the press conference and stated it will be concentrating on the SAUSA Project as well as the Treasure Valley Task Force.

Margie Watson asked if we could see some information on where these offenders were from. That way we could use the information for member jurisdictions in future conversations on the SAUSA Project. Mark indicated they would try to add this information to future reports.

Mark Haws asked if the SAUSA Project is having an impact in the community. Tom Dale indicated that his sense was that the project was having an impact and the word is out. He further stated is that we had a long term vision included lobbying the Idaho Legislature at the end of the project to get them to step up to the plate and fund this activity on a permanent basis.

Tom asked if there were any local legislators that we could approach to getting the State to pick up the SAUSA Project. John Evans suggested that we bring this issue up at the retreat and discuss some strategy around the SAUSA Project.

Bill opened the floor to get input on the Retreat and future partnership meetings. Frank McKeever suggested that we are having real problems with irrigation districts and maybe it should be a topic for future discussion. John Evans mentioned that we should have time set aside at the retreat to discuss future partnership topics.

Margie Watson moved to approve the minutes and financial report. Nate Mitchell seconded.

Meeting adjorned.