NTEC Air Program

The Air Program at the National Tribal Environmental Council has facilitated tribal participation and provided both policy and technical support over the past several years to such initiatives as the National Tribal Air Association, National Designation and Implementation Workgroup, Carbon Sequestration and Western Regional Air Partnership. Each of these initiatives promotes a tribe’s authority to develop and implement its own air quality programs in accordance with principles of Federal Indian law, and as provided by the Clean Air Act §301(d) and the Tribal Authority Rule (40 CFR §§49.1– .11). The air program will continue to be engaged in these initiatives and support other activities that enhance each tribe’s ability to protect, preserve and promote its environment, health, welfare, and cultural values through wise management of air quality.

Attention:

OAQPS has completed a final draft of the document titled Guidance and Policy for Imple-mentation of Tribal Air Monitoring Programs. The intended purpose of this guidance document is to improve the ability of tribes and Regional Offices to prioritize monitoring needs, choose an appropriate level of funding for ambient air monitoring on tribal lands relative to other air management work, and ensure that monitoring funds are used to best effect on chosen projects. This document is also intended to provide a level of consistency between OAR and the Regions in our expectations of tribal monitoring programs. The intended audiences for this document are EPA Regional Office and Headquarters staff involved in resource allocations, tribal air grant award and management, program evalua-tion, strategic planning of monitoring networks, technical support to monitoring programs, or using ambient air data collected from tribal monitoring programs.

We welcome reviews of this document by the tribes and would appreciate receiving comments by September 28, 2007. Please email your comments to Michael Papp (papp.michael@epa.gov). [Click here for document]

National Tribal Environmental Council
2501 Rio Grande Blvd. NW, Suite A
Albuquerque, NM 87104
(505) 242-2175 Ofc (505) 242-2654 Fax
www.ntec.org