Air quality analysis and related risk assessment for the Bonneville Power Administration's Resource Program Environmental Impact Statement

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is considering 12 different alternatives for acquiring energy resources over the next 20 years. Each of the alternatives utilizes a full range of energy resources (e.g., coal, cogeneration, conservation, and nuclear); however, individual alternatives place greater emphases on different types of power-producing resources and employ different timetables for implementing these resources. The environmental impacts that would result from the implementation of each alternative and the economic valuations of these impacts, will be an important consideration in the alternative selection process. In this report we discuss the methods used to estimate environmental impacts from the resource alternatives. We focus on pollutant emissions rates, ground-level air concentrations of basic criteria pollutants, the acidity of rain, particulate deposition, ozone concentrations, visibility attenuation, global warming, human health effects, agricultural and forest impacts, and wildlife impacts. For this study, pollutant emission rates are computed by processing BPA data on power production and associated pollutant emissions. The assessment of human health effects from ozone indicated little variation between the resource alternatives. Impacts on plants, crops, and wildlife populations from power plant emissions are projected to be minimal for all resource alternatives