Exhibit E
i Port Commission Regular Meeting
of February 26, 2019
February 26, 2019
Port of Seattle Commissioners:
There are some major issues you should be talking about and asking questions on. These involve health
disparities, emission releases of toxic and criteria pollutants into the airshed around the airport and what
effects both cumulative noise and emissions from Sea-Tac airport have on human health and the environment.
You should all be aware by now that Sea-Tac airport jet aircraft are the greatest producer of noise in the entire
state, the largest single source of greenhouse gas and nitrogen oxides in the county and it is well documented
that airports are major sources of toxic and criteria emissions. In fact, Sea-Tac’s thousands of tons of emissions
released each year near densely populated neighborhoods rival some of the largest polluters in the nation.
How has the Port of Seattle responded to these concerns?
The Port of Seattle has been planning for years to NOT do any air quality monitoring. They have also planned
to NOT analyze most emissions. They also wish to not do too much to evaluate risk and health impacts and
recommending to internally summarize some studies. They can do this least amount of work rather quick and
cheap by in-house staff and without outside interference, for instance, by the department of health. This
flimsy, biased and unscientific approach is their preferred one. They may recommend more depending upon
community pressure. The maximum expense in option D is 1.5 to 2.0 million dollars, would involve health
experts and take a year to complete with three preferred much less expensive alternatives, the first of which,
costing nearly nothing, is recommended. A maximum 2 million dollar study is less than 2 100ths of a percent of
the over 10 billion dollar expansion cost.
in my opinion, real science scares the Port staff and it is obvious from their internal documents they don’t
know what to do about mitigation of, for instance, the ultrafine particulate problem. They are concerned
about pollution problems that cannot be mitigated leading to reduced operations. They are also now reporting
in the EA/EIS scoping that they will not evaluate environmental justice even though it is required and was
requested by community, organizations and even EPA. This makes me wonder at what level the community
concern must rise to for them to move to more expensive, time consuming and thorough discovery options
when even EPA requests for an environmental justice analysis can be ignored.
Internal Port of Seattle staff memos in summary:
1) Air quality monitoring and cancer studies have found no significant impacts.
This is a lie. Monitoring found violations of the Washington State Acceptable Source Impact level of air toxics:
Dichloromethane, carbon tetrachloride, benzene, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethene, formaldehyde,
acetaldehyde, acrolein, benzo(a)pyrene, short term sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. Modeling found
violations of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, and carbon
monoxide.
2) FAA not expected to require the Port to do additional air modelling or monitoring for the SAMP.
This is irresponsible. The State Department of Health and the State Board of Health stated in 2001 that impacts
are unknown because no comprehensive air quality study has ever been performed to determine impacts
around Sea-Tac Airport and then called for a thorough air quality analysis that has still not ever been done.
Department of Ecology presented a work plan for this exact study right before 9/11. Since then all planning for
further analysis has been stalled. EPA has now asked the area be defined and characteristics of the existing
conditions be analyzed. This cannot happen without a comprehensive analysis such as monitoring the air in the
communities around the airport for both toxics and criteria emissions as has been recommended by the state
and EPA in the past. City of Burien recently passed resolution also asks for these long overdue discoveries.
Puget Sound Clean Air Agency has asked for a risk analysis due to their belief hydrocarbon and other
dangerous cancer-causing chemicals in jet exhaust may affect local public health. Still, no proper risk analysis
has been done. If someone voices concern over some of the worrisome findings of short term monitoring the
Port claims it was too preliminary to draw conclusions, meanwhile Port staff are using those same studies to
say there are no proven problems.
Previous health studies have not found impacts.
This is false information. The State Department of Health found the following statistically significantly higher
than average illnesses:
Lung cancer cases within one mile of the airport when compared to King County and State
Oral and pharyngeal cancer cases within one mile of the airport compared to state
Deaths from lung cancer and COPD three miles to the west and north and one mile to the east and south of
the airport compared to King County
Hospital admission for asthma, pneumonia/influenza three miles to the west, north, east and one half mile to
the south of the airport compared to King County
75% higher glioblastoma brain tumors and much higher rates found in two hot-spots to the northeast of the
airport in 98168 and southwest of the airport in 98198. Port staff continue to tell you that this problem was in
only one year 1992 and then stopped being a problem. Thousands of people were removed from the flightpath
in subsequent years but the spike still persisted in 1993. The problem was so alarming to the Riverton Heights
community that the Port bought out the neighborhood even though it was not in the flight path or original
plans for buy-out. Higher than average brain tumors are still occurring in the 5 mile area around the airport as
well as statistically significantly higher than King County average asthma.
Please see the enclosed discussion with Eric Fitch admitting the planning is not going to address most aircraft
emissions and the discussion should be shifted to the Century Agenda goals which might result in reduced
aircraft emissions in the long term, not specifying what, when or how that might happen. Also see former
Commissioner Albro’s desire to push back against the way they are talking about support for an air quality
study. At the Federal Way scoping meeting, both Leslie Stanton and Lance Lyttle agreed that an air quality
monitoring study was a good idea.
It is imperative the EA/EIS document include a thorough environmental justice outreach, analysis and
mitigation proposals, monitoring of air quality and a health impact analysis. EPA has also asked for a
monitoring of mitigation to assure objective data collection on success, a cumulative analysis that includes
other projects besides the 30 planned for the SAMP which would include increased emissions and noise from
509 expansion, past, present and future impacts on health and quality of life.
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AirQuality & HealthAnalysisRecommendation(May 2015)
History of Air Quality & Health Studies at Sea-Tac
To date, Sea-Tac Airport has conducted or participated in several
air quality monitoring and modeling studies, and has been the
subject of health studies. These include monitoring and
dispersion modeling done as part of a Master Plan
Environmental Impact Statement in 1997, and cancer incidence
studies conducted in response to community concerns in the last
two decades. None found significant impacts.
FAA & NEPA Approach to Air Quality Studies
faaistutanjeusdinrsuinePortof Seattletodoadditionalir dispersionmodelling or monitoring for thecurrent
SustainableAirportMaster Plan. Thisis primarily because the
airport will bein conformity with the Clean Air Actin 2016
(this was not the case in 1997), and there are no exceedances of
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What Other Airports Have Done
Other airports have not been required to do modeling or
monitoring under similar circumstances, and have instead
conducted additional studies due to concerns from the
community, not the FAA. There is still a possibility more
analysis could get triggered for the SAMP work due to
community concern.
Costs
We reviewed costs associated with options ranging from a
simple summary of the health-related analyses conducted to date
to a more comprehensive health study. In brief, costs range
from relatively low for a summary (probably 80-120 hours in
staff time) to relatively high for modeling ($400K-$600K) and
at least $1.8M or higher for a comprehensive health study.
Recommendation for Sea-Tac Airport
Giventhat previoushealthstudieshavenotfoundany
significantimpacts, the limited information regarding
community interest and the high costs for modeling, monitoring,
and health studies, we recommend Option A below. We also
provide a cascade of additional recommendations in order of
preference, should community concern begin to build or new
information emerges.
A. Do Nothing/Monitor Community Concerns ($0 + in-
house work)
It is our recommendation to summarizeall air quality and
health research conducted to date at Sea-Tac Airport and
other airports in North America, anddemonstratehownew
studies are unlikelytoprovidedifferentoutcomesorair
quality exceedances.This work could be donein house.
We will then monitor community concerns and decide ifwe
need to move to option B in Q3 or Q4 2015.
B. Dispersion Modeling Ahead of NEPA or community
triggers ($350K to $650K)
Developing the necessary input files to conduct dispersion
modeling for 2014 or 2034 scenarios requires 3 to 6
months, and can only be done after a scenario is fully
developed (airside, landside, terminal emission sources).
The cost to prepare these input files is also high ($300K
for first scenario). Therefore the benefit of conducting
modeling ahead of schedule is minimal and the earliest it
could be done for the SAMP 2034 alternatives is in Q2
2016.
C. Monitoring Ahead of NEPA or community triggers
($250K min, but scalable)
Developing a monitoring plan requires significant planning
with air quality experts. Obtaining the necessary
instrumentation, site locations and expertise could take 12-
18 months, and monitoring should be done for at least 3
months in both summer and winter seasons. While this
option is less expensive than option B, it is considerably
more complex, requires more partners, and only satisfies
questions about current air quality and not future airport
growth impacts.
D. Health Study in response to community triggers ($1.5M
to $2.0M)
This is an extension of option B and would require large
scale participation with health experts, would take at least a
year to plan, and at least a year to conduct, if it was done in
the same style as the Boston-Logan Airport study, which
we would recommend.
Uncertainties
None ofthe recommendations are expected to answer all
' community
concerns about air quality and health. The key
uncertainties are:
* While dispersion models have improved, they perform
better when averaged over time and space. This means
specific events and locations in the model will be less
accurate.
* Monitoring studies typically only capture criteria air
pollutant concentrations, and it is very expensive to
monitor for less common chemicals. The limited
geographic scope also means communities often call into
question whether the right monitoring locations were
chosen.
* The science is immature on the health impacts and
measurement standards of ultrafine particulates (UFP) and
the link between odors and health. Health studies would
not be able to link these concerns because no data exists on
community exposure.
68484985.msg
From Linda St
Eric,thanksforthethoughts. I’mnotopposedtopushingback,
asIthink thattheultrafinemessagebeingspreadbycertain
communitymemberswarrantsafactualresponse. To that end, I
support the stronger language about linkages.
However, I have concerns about the other language, in particular
(1) the possible interpretation that the SAMP (and by extension,
its environmental review) will address ultrafines and (2) the
reference to federal intervention.
Ifyou want to put in language about airport growth, we could
help with some edits,butourplanningisnot goingtoaddress
most aircraft emissions,and I don’t want to give that
impression. Meeting our Century Agenda goals could result in
reduced aircraft emissions in the long term, and perhaps we
couldshifttheemphasistothatmessage.
The federal intervention reference raised alarm bells for me. It
reads to me as “ifthe
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(and we’re not aware of evidence of that to date).
There’s a lot more I could say here, but I think a discussion
would be more helpful. However, I'm traveling Monday and
Wednesday and in an all-day meeting Tuesday. Ifyou need to
get this out right away, I’d vote for a simpler response, with an
internal meeting soon to walk through the ultrafine issue and
agree on an external message.
Stephanie and Stan: please weigh in on this. Thanks.
From: ffitch, Eric
Sent: Friday, May 12, 2017 2:34 PM
To: Schinfeld, Eric; Collins, Julie; Edwards, Pearse; Halse, Katie
Ce: Stanton, Leslie; Meyn, Stephanie; Purcell, Arlyn (Env&Sus); Shepherd, Stan
Subject: RE: CHAC support letter fund SB5225 airport air quality study this year
That said, I’d be interested in what others think about what may
be gained from this approach. Maybe the thing to do is present
both letters to Commissioner Albro and let me know our
concerns with pushing back too hard rather than simply
highlighting our agreement on the need for more information.
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