The Houston Health Department (HHD) requests City Council approval of an ordinance authorizing a grant application to and acceptance of an award from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for HHD’s Bureau of Pollution Control and Prevention (BPCP) for the City of Houston, Community Scale Air Toxic project. The budget and project period is from 01/01/2018 to 06/30/2019 for a total budget and project cost of $494,024.00, which includes HHD’s in-kind matching funds comprising of personnel and fringe benefits worth $71,864.00. The maximum grant amount to be awarded by the EPA is $422,160.00. The City will provide no cash contributions.
HHD also requests City Council to authorized the Mayor to execute all related contracts, agreements and documents with the approval of the City Attorney in connection with the grant and to authorize the Director or his designee to act as the City's representative with the authority to apply for, accept and expend the grant funds as awarded, and to accept and expend all subsequent supplemental awards, if any, and to extend the term and/or budget and project period not to exceed five years, if extended by the EPA during the project period and does not require cash matching funds.
The principal goals of the grant are to 1) identify and profile air toxic sources posing the highest population risk in Houston, Texas census tracts according to the 2011 National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) and 2) evaluate the impact of emission reduction measures.
In the high-risk census tracts, identified by NATA in Houston, formaldehyde is the largest risk driver followed by acetaldehyde, benzene and 1, 3 butadiene which were also previously identified as posing “definite health risk” to Houstonians by the Mayor’s Health Effects of Air Pollution Task Force.
HHD’s BPCP will partner with formaldehyde air scientists at University of Houston, the community groups Air Alliance Houston and Environmental Integrity Project and the solar occultation flux contractor, FluxSense, Inc to 1) address community-scale monitoring, 2) “characterize near-source concentrations” from industry sectors, and 3) obtain information regarding substantially elevated ambient concentrations of toxics providing information to assist regulators in their efforts to assess the impact of emission reduction measures.
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Stephen L. Williams, M.ED., M.P.A.
Director, Houston Health Department