The Great Lakes Regional Toxic Air Emissions Inventory project represents a unique effort to quantify and manage toxics air emissions which impact the waters of the Great Lakes Basin. The air agencies in all eight Great Lakes states, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and the province of Ontario, cooperated in compiling a comprehensive, comparable and consistent emissions inventory of toxic air emissions from major point, area and mobile sources in the region.

The governors of the eight Great Lakes states and the Premier of Ontario established the framework for consolidating emissions inventory when signing the Toxic Substances Control Agreement in 1986. This agreement recognized the need for coordinating regional action to quantify and control toxic pollutants entering the Great Lakes system.

This ongoing initiative provides the first full practical test of processes, procedures, and systems which the states and province have been developing over the past 10 years to ensure that the region-wide inventories, are accurate and consistent from one state to another.

Since 1989, the Great Lakes states and the province of Ontario, Canada have been working together through the Great Lakes Commission to develop the regional database of air toxic emissions data and estimates. Working initially with funding provided by the Great Lakes Protection Fund to establish a standardized protocol for emission estimation, identified the list of target compounds, established a mechanism for regional cooperation and public awareness. After the passage of the Clear Air Act Amendments in 1990, U.S. EPA began providing funding for the project under the Great Lakes Air Deposition Strategy of the Great Waters Program.

The first complete emission inventory was released in 1997, using calendar year 1993 data. Thereafter, five regional inventories of 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2001 emission data have been compiled and released. Annually, the steering committee members of the project, representing the states and provinces involved in a collective effort to compile an inventory for the 213 toxic compounds of concern from point, area and mobile sources. The inventory data for each state and province consists of a comprehensive dataset that stores facility-level information, industrial processes, control technologies employed and emission speciation profiles, corresponding to Source Code Classifications (SCC), Area Mobile Source (AMS), and the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code. For more information about the regional emissions inventory effort, please see the Great Lakes Commission’s web site at http://www.glc.org/air/

To better communicate the data to the public, the Great Lakes Commission initiated the development of the Centralized Air emission On-Line (CAROL) web portal. The overall goals of CAROL are 1) to design, develop and deploy a centralized air toxic emissions repository for the Great Lakes region, and 2) to communicate the contents of the repository to distinct user groups in an effective manner.

The reporting process involves active states collaboration by compiling states and provincial data in a consistent RAPIDS format and to import in the GLC Regional Repository. The annual emission data is stored within the repository and summarized for public consumption through the CAROL portal.

Major functionalities of CAROL include:

The CAROL portal is served as the entry point for regional emission data. The large amount of information generated by this regional inventory project and the diversity of the potential audiences complicates the communication process. Effective communication must ensure that the recipient is able to easily identify what information is available, assess its quality, and access it for use. It is important to note that the goal is not to replicate any of the existing functionality within the RAPIDS desktop applications or states/provincial inventory systems, but instead is to develop new, functional and innovative tools that facilitate the discover, evaluate and access of regional emission data.

For more information, contact:
Great Lakes Commission
2805 S. Industrial Hwy. Suite #100
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104
Phone: 734-971-9135
Fax: 734-971-9150
URL: http://www.glc.org/