Cleaner Air Oregon Permitting Support

MFA’s air quality team has supported dozens of Oregon industrial facilities through the Cleaner Air Oregon permitting program, ranging from wood treating to aerospace parts manufacturing. To support Clients, MFA has provided compliance trainings, developed toxic air contaminant emission inventories, conducted dispersion modeling via AERMOD, reviewed land use zoning characterizations, and performed health risk assessment.

To assist clients with faster in-house risk assessment, MFA developed an automated Level 1 risk assessment tool that has been widely used to determine sources and pollutants that could potentially lead to offsite risks. MFA has assisted clients with reassessing raw material choices and processes to reduce estimated health risks. In several cases, MFA helped clients reduce estimated risks to levels below which Oregon permitting would be required.

MFA prepared a spreadsheet tool that automates the Level 1 risk assessment calculations for cancer, chronic non-cancer, and acute non-cancer risk. The tool has an input page for emissions, stack height, and distance to nearest receptor. The tool then conducts all calculations and provides the risk as well as the contribution of each pollutant and source to the assessed risk categories. This assessment allows facilities to do their own risk calculations and to determine which emission and source assumptions may need further refinement based on the risk culpability. This tool was requested and is being used at two universities as well as numerous facilities throughout Oregon.