Dear Board and Advisory Council Members: As noted in the email from Mike Gilroy below, the Agency has issued a "Smog Watch" through Saturday. With the elevated temperatures expected for the next several days it will be difficult for the region to avoid exceeding the new federal ozone standard at one or more monitoring sites in the Cascade foothills. If we have two days with elevated values we may well violate the new ozone standard, which would mean non-attainment for ozone for the Puget Sound region for the first time in over ten years. We are circulating our "Smog Watch" messages to all of our Agency contacts inlcuding major employers like Boeing to request that people do some simple things to reduce their production of ozone precursors - things such as filling their fuel tanks in the evening hours, reducing driving where possible and taking transit. We are hard up against the new standard and we will need some good luck and help from the public to avoid an ozone violation. I wanted you all to be aware of the situation. As Mike notes below, you can find forecast information and air quality data for our monitoring sites on our website at: www.pscleanair.org. The ozone monitors to watch are Enumclaw, Yelm, Eatonville and North Bend. You can access the data for each monitoring site by clicking on "current air quality", then "current ozone" and then on the name of each monitoring site. The Ecology data usually trails real time by as much as 12 hours, but by tomorrow morning you should be able to see the ozone trends. Please help us get the word out to your employees about the need to reduce driving, use transit and avoid refueling during daytime hours. We'll send you copies of our Smog Watch messages as we send them out. Dennis McLerran -----Original Message----- From: Mike Gilroy Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 7:20 AM To: 'Jeff Renner (jrenner@king5.com)'; 'Rich Marriott'; 'Chris Warren (cwarren@nwcn.com)'; 'Nick Allard'; 'Ed Muir (emuir@nwcn.com)'; 'Chris Warren (cwarren@nwcn.com)'; 'Don Carson (dcarson@nwcn.com)'; 'Ed Muir (emuir@nwcn.com)'; 'sodonnell@nwcn.com'; 'lvancise@nwcn.com' Cc: Ken Knowle Subject: SMOG WATCH-Degraded Air Quality Thursday - Sunday AM To all: Just a heads up to let you know we will be issuing another Smog Watch today. This one will last until the onshore flow returns late on Saturday night. There is a strong probability that we will exceed the new much tougher EPA Ozone standard on Friday and Saturday in the downwind areas in South and Southeast King And Pierce counties. It will be difficult to avoid a violation of the new standard. A violation has a profound impact on the regional governments who must implement action to correct the problem. More importantly in the short term, is to let people who have respiratory problems or other air quality sensitive heath issues that the next 72 hours will be difficult for them in the main impact areas. Hopefully they can take personal actions to help reduce symptoms brought on by poor air quality. Despite earlier model guidance that suggested this could last well into next week it now looks pretty good for a return to good air quality on Sunday. Please feel free to contact me any time (evenings or weekends are fine) if you have questions or concerns. You will find our forecasts and discussion on our Web site and EPA's Air Now site. Regards, Mike Mike Gilroy Manager, Meteorological and Technical Services Puget Sound Clean Air Agency 1904 3rd Ave, Suite 105 Seattle, WA 98101-3317 Tel; 206-689-4001 cell: 206-295-5844 email: mikeg@pscleanair.org website: www.pscleanair.org Bill Smith Senior Environmental Specialist City of Tacoma Solid Waste Management 3510 S. Mullen Street Tacoma, WA 98409 253-593-7719 Phone 253-591-5547 Fax