ISSUE 1-22-22 INTEL AIR POLLUTION WILL INCREASE, BUT CORRALES WELLS MAY BE PROTECTED

Days after he retired in 2004, Shively wrote a letter to N.M. Environment Secretary Ron Curry —now Corrales’ Village Administrator— outlining his concerns about the Intel permit.

In his letter, Shively gave reasons why he considered the current air pollution permit to be a sham, as defined by a federal policy memorandum.

“The permit is impractical and unenforceable. This has been repeated and emphasized many times and by many people during the review process and since.”

Shively’s 2004 letter said he had supplied the names of 16 other former NMED employees who shared his concerns about the Intel permit and how it was approved.

Shively said the permit “is written with the emission factors provided by Intel that have never been independently validated. The department cannot determine Intel’s air emissions, nor can the factors or emissions be determined with any real confidence or precision.”

The result, Shively pointed out, was that “Intel can’t be found in violation of the emission limits in the permit. Only Intel knows the origin or validity of the factors.”

Intel’s Permit No. 325-Modification 9, approved in March 2000 to cover the massive Fab 11-X expansion, was based almost entirely on calculating emissions of industrial pollutants, rather than measuring them. Those calculations were based on “emission factors,” or multipliers, generated at Intel’s research and development facility in Oregon.

Documents and notes in the N.M.Air Quality Bureau files on the Intel permit as far back at 1994 reveal that Shively repeatedly sought independent verification of those emissions factors.

Unless the bureau had some means of checking or validating the emissions factors, he said, state regulators were left only with Intel’s word that emissions did not exceed limits set in the permit.

NMED Secretary Curry took no action back in 2004 when Shively and other Air Quality Bureau officials and former officials urged that a more protective permit be written for Intel’s operations here.

In subsequent years, Curry was appointed regional administrator for EPA’s office in Dallas.

Back in 1994, when Curry was NMED’s deputy secretary,  he said state regulators were wary and uncertain about prospects for imposing restrictions on Intel. (See Corrales Comment Vol. XIII, No.13 August 20, 1994 “Intel, Corrales In Step For Tighter Air Quality Regulations.”)

“We knew they were big and getting bigger,” Curry recalled in 1994. “Intel was like a giant gorilla, and we weren’t sure how to get a hold of this gorilla; we didn’t know if this gorilla would let us get hold of it.”

Rio Rancho realtor Marcy Brandenburg, who attended the December 2021 CEWG meeting, observed “Intel needs to quit talking about  how they follow the rules when there are literally no rules to follow. The EPA is a sieve.”

The old “minor source” permit issued by the N.M. Air Quality Bureau allowed Intel to release to the air up to 24 tons annually of federally-designated Hazardous Air Pollutants, more tons of state-designated Toxic Air Pollutants, 96.5 tons a year of volatile organic compounds (mostly solvents) and 14.2 tons yearly of particulate matter (mostly silica dust).

The air pollution permit that Intel now seeks to receive will not be subject to a public hearing unless citizens demand it. Those emissions ceilings would not change under the proposed permit, but Intel tends to demonstrate that it will meet state and federal air quality regulations by submitting results of computer modeling for emissions dispersal.

Another Corrales participant in the CEWG meetings, Louis Scuderi, will analyze those modeled air pollution results. He is a University of New Mexico geology professor who has specialized in remote sensing and global positioning systems. He is studying the effects of Intel’s chemical emissions on vegetation in the surrounding area.

O’Mara explained that Intel and NMED have agreed that a new permit is not needed, since the chip-maker would keep the existing pollution control equipment and add one new incinerator to burn off volatile organic compounds.

“Instead they are moving a number of the existing thermal oxidizers and scrubbers from the southern part of the campus to the north end where the new production is going to take place,” he said.

Scuderi has sent an extensive critique of the application to NMED and has demanded that they provide him with the modeling done by the Intel contractor.

The next CEWG meeting will be held February 16 starting at 5:15 p.m. It has usually met at the Corrales Senior Center, although its meetings are now via Zoom. A long-time member of that group, Hugh Church, representing the local branch of the American Lung Association, died January 4. Another long-time CEWG member, air pollution dispersion modeler Mike Williams, died in December.

At the December CEWG meeting, Chavez said NMED had asked Intel to do computer modeling for pollution dispersion since a lot of equipment has been relocated.

At that meeting, Scuderi questioned Chavez closely about the modeling and asked for a copy of the complete report. He was told he could request that from NMED. He said he was concerned that almost all of the pollution control equipment was to be moved to the northern part of the Intel campus, thereby concentrating a high number of pollution sources in one small area.

Scuderi has reported effects from Intel’s pollution at his home near the top of Tierra Encantada. At the December CEWG meeting, he criticized the modeling for not addressing possible recombination of concentrated emissions from multiple units in a small area with other toxic chemicals.

It was an issue that Corrales residents have raised repeatedly since  2000; although Intel insists it does not use certain toxic chemicals, they have been detected in the air around Intel, possibly having been formed inside air ducts or in the open air.

At the CEWG meeting, Chavez responded to Scuderi that Intel’s waste chemicals are not mixing to form other toxins.