Centerlines - April 2008 - (Page 27) ENVIRONMENT airplanes competing for the use of the deicing pad, there could be a greater impact on operations.” While Aha said that she understands the fact that the EPA is required to develop some type of standard, she felt that the complexity of airport operations represents a real challenge to development of a single standard. “That’s why the industry has focused on educating the EPA as often as possible to make sure that any analysis and assumptions they make are based on the most accurate information. As an industry, we know the airports better than the EPA does.” Vacuum collection of spent aircraft deicing fluid at Detroit Metro gate areas. water permit—every five years—for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates JFK, without any substantive review process,” said Larry Levine, a staff attorney at NRDC headquarters in New York. The Port Authority had been in the process of negotiating permit limits for JFK with the state when NRDC filed its lawsuit. Levine reported that the lawsuit resulted in issuance of a new permit in late 2007 incorporating several key elements for the first time. They include required monitoring of glycol and other biochemical substances in the airport runoff by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and a water quality modeling study over the next two winters to determine the impact of runoff from the airport on Jamaica Bay and its tributaries. Educating EPA on Airport Practices But many airport authorities have been striving to minimize the impact of deicing for years and are working to educate the EPA on the need to look at deicing issues as airport-specific. One of the most proactive has been Detroit Metropolitan Airport. According to Bryan Wagoner, the Wayne County Airport Authority’s environmental program administrator, the airport operates under “an extremely stringent” NPDES permit, which has strict discharge limitations. “We do minimal at-gate deicing, with over 90 percent done on our four deicing pads, which all the carriers are experienced with using,” he said. All deicing fluid runoff containing propylene glycol concentrations greater than 2 percent is collected for recycle and processed to recover the PG component.” Wagoner added that the airport authority has invested over $100 million in storm water runoff infrastructure, with all storm water discharges sampled six times per day on all discharge days. According to Catherine WetherDialog Between EPA and ACI-NA ell, assistant director, capital proAs the rule making process moves grams and environmental affairs, for along, the EPA and ACI-NA have the Massachusetts Port Authority continued their dialog. In a January (Massport), the current permitting 2008 meeting, the agency provided process “has been shown to be an overview of their “initial thinking” effective.” She explained that under regarding their approach to the rule, the terms of its permit, Massport, according to ACI-NA’s Steinhilber. which owns Boston Logan Inter“The general elements included a national Airport, must evaluate the percent (or some other measure) capimpact of storm water chemical runture requirement for applied aircraft off on its receiving water. The evaludeicing fluids, numeric limitations for ation will be in the form of a study, direct discharges from on-site treatestimated to cost $500,000 over the ment systems, and a possible phasenext several years. out or limitation on the use of urea Susan Aha, deicing program for airfield deicing,” she reported. manager at Portland (Ore.) Interna“However, their thinking is very pretional Airport, stressed that any new liminary, and ACI-NA will continue to regulations should take into account work with EPA as they better refine the level of airport operations. their approach to ensure they properly “Different types of deicing fluid consider the impacts and feasibility management would have to be for the industry.” implemented based on traffic levels and other factors unique to each airport,” she said. “For instance, if it’s For more information on EPA’s activities and a small airport with involvement in the airport deicing issue, go to: one carrier operating Airport Deicing Effluent Guidelines a few flights a day, a www.epa.gov/guide/airport separate deicing pad Effluent Limitation Guidelines would probably have www.epa.gov/waterscience/guide minimal impact on National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System the operations. But (NPDES) permit information at a larger non-hub cfpub.epa.gov/npdes airport, with multiple carriers and many WEBLINKS www.aci-na.org | CENTERLINES 27 http://www.epa.gov/guide/airport http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/guide http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes http://www.aci-na.org
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