Native Voices

The Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals Volume XIV, No. 4, Winter 2007–08

In This Issue

St. Regis Mohawks Secure First Tribal Implementation Plan

S ometimes retaining what you don’t have is the most environmentally sound way to go. For the St. Regis (Akwesasne) Mohawk Tribe, the U.S. portion of which located on the Canadian border in northwestern New York, obtain-

ing the nation’s first Tribal Implementation Plan (TIP) doesn’t relate so much to present environmental-enforcement demands. Rather, the TIP, approved by U.S. EPA on October 31, 2007, will help ensure that the tribe’s 6000 (U.S.-side) residents breathe clean air in the face of future industrial expansion on their land. It also empowers the tribe to speak with a stronger voice regarding nontribal pollution sources and issues in their region.

St. Regis Air Quality Program Manager, Angela Benedict-Dunn, says she and her three fellow air-program colleagues are feeling mostly “relief” that the TIP effort, which formally began with a Tribal Council

resolution in 2002, has finally paid off. Not because of a pressing need for the increased authority the TIP brings, but because the arduous process at times seemed endless. As with other TIP-seeking tribes, preparatory work, emissions inventories, paper demands, and bureaucratic obstacles generally take years to complete—a difficult process for a small environmental program such as the four-person air program at St. Regis (their entire environmental program is staffed by more than two dozen people).

“We have very few sources here,” Dunn says of the reservation, which on the U.S. side encompasses just 14,600 St. Regis Air Quality Technician Jeri

Jacobs works on a monitor.

In our Winter issue of Native Voices we take a look at air-management success stories of two tribes: the St. Regis Mohawks, who recently obtained the country's first Tribal Implementation Plan; and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in Washington state, whose innovative woodstove change-out program has dramatically improved tribal health and removed tons of pollutants from the air. Also in this issue: ITEP’s Environmental Education Outreach Program involves students in sustainability and forest health and our "Basic Inspector" training program supports tribal inspectors in both federal and sovereign tribal environmental-protection efforts.

–see ST. REGIS on p. 3

TIP Basics

—see TIP on p. 3

A Tribal Implementation Plan (TIP) is a tribe’s blueprint, as

guided by the federal Clean Air Act, for protecting and/or im-proving its air qual ity in regard to National Ambient Air Qual ity Standards (NAAQS and for meet-ing reg ional haze program goals .

NAAQS pol lutants include:• Carbon monoxide• Lead• Nitrogen dioxide• Particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5)• Ozone• Sulfur dioxide

Native Voices

DirectorCalbert Seciwa

Associate DirectorMehrdad Khatibi

Assistant Professor &Curriculum Coordinator

Patricia Ellsworth

TAMS Center Co-DirectorFarshid Farsi (EPA)

TAMS Technical SpecialistGlenn Gehring

EEOP CoordinatorMansel Nelson

Sr. Coordinator–Environmental Compliance &

Inspection Program–Solid Waste Todd Barnell

Program Mgr. – Professional AssistanceLydia Scheer

Budget ManagerLisa Begay

EditorDennis Wall

Institute for TribalEnvironmental Professionals

–Northern Arizona University–

From the Director

Native Voices is published by NAU with a grant from the U.S Environmental

Protection Agency

2

Cal SeciwaITEP Director

K eshhi!Stories of environmental

change are common to many Native cultures. My own Zuni heritage includes stories of upheaval and change, and the need for the people to alter their nonproductive ways (and return to older ways) in order to survive. Many tribes have stories addressing similar themes. Inherent in these stories is that the people must take responsibility for making, or remaking, a better world.

Perhaps a modern lesson from such stories is a recognition that we must not wait for Washington to solve problems associated with present-day global warming and climate change. Many tribes have embraced that responsibility. Native people are stepping up and seeking to address these challenges with their own knowledge, expertise, and applied resources.

A climate change conference held on the Cocopah reservation in December of 2006 brought together Native people who are working to ensure or reclaim the old reverence and keep their little pieces of the world in balance. The Makah Nation in Washington state has recently initiated a study on climate change and its impacts on coastal waters and associated human communities. The Hualapai Tribe in Arizona has launched a program to reintroduce traditional stewardship approaches to their land. In the Midwest, a coalition of tribes issued a public proclamation noting the gravity of the climate-change threat and their intent to respond with intelligent, sensible strategies. The Lakota are exploring wind power and other alternative energy resources; one Lakota tribe, the Rosebud Sioux, recently constructed the first Native-owned, industrial-scale wind turbine, which during its 25-year lifespan will produce power equivalent to 25,000 tons of burned coal. These and many other tribes are taking responsibility for

a problem that threatens us all.

The Native people of Alaska are, so far, the most directly impacted by global warming. Traditional hunters are falling through ice drastically reduced in thickness from its former state. Coastal villages are facing relocation inland as heightened storm events and associated coastal erosion make living in their traditional seaside homes untenable. The numbers and migratory habits of fish, birds, and land animals have changed drastically in recent decades, as reported by tribal elders and even younger hunters and foragers throughout the region.

This growing focus on climate change has intensified tribal efforts to restore and protect their natural resources. Oftentimes that means paying attention to the wisdom that tribal ancestors developed in the timeless past, ways that have guided our people for many centuries. Those old ways generally begin with a sense of reverence for the world around us.

In modern times, such reverence is often expressed in modern ways, through the avenues of Western science, laws, and regulations. In this arena the tribes are moving forward on a variety of fronts, for example seeking Tribal Implementation Plans that restore their sovereign authority to regulate pollution sources, and developing and expanding tribal air programs that address the specific challenges they face.

For many Native people, it can be argued that they have more at stake in the face of global warming than do many non-Natives. That is because when global warming impacts Indian lands, it threatens not only residents’ economic livelihood and comfort but the very core of their existence, which is tied to the land and all the living beings who reside there. Create imbalances on Native lands

and you disrupt a way of life and a spiritual connection that has long sustained the people.

At ITEP, we are moving forward to develop training and support mechanisms for tribes who choose to address the global-warming challenge. Our upcoming Climate Change course is one such effort; we are also developing a website with climate-change information and resources of special interest and usefulness to the tribes.

Please share with us your stories and thoughts on this topic. Tell us what else you think we can do to further aid in this critical effort.

E’la:kwa.

Native Voices

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ways.” Now that the TIP is law, one of the tribe’s next steps is to develop an efficient compliance infrastructure.“We have the violations and the standards written out,” Dunn says, “but right now it’s difficult to enforce them. If there’s a ticket given or instructions on what someone has to do, we can tell them till we’re blue in the face, but whether they comply is a different matter.”

However, she says, facility operators have generally been cooperative. “When you tie it into air quality and the seven generations that are going to be breathing the air, pretty much everyone is willing to comply.”

ST. REGIS – cont. from p. 1

acres. She lists generators that power a tribal casino as well as open burning on the reservation—the latter is already regulated by tribal permitting—and generators that power a transfer station as well as numerous tribal homes. The reservation is home to 17 gas stations, but those sources, as with the casino and transfer station, will likely be grandfathered in. If the casino expands, as is anticipated, its power generation will likely fall under TIP regulations.

With so few sources (one local, long-term air toxics source is scheduled to shut down at the end of 2008), why did the tribe feel the need for a federal pollution-management plan? Dunn says that, after watching how industrial development has proceeded historically in Indian country, the tribe chose to move proactively to maintain its present level of air quality. “We saw what happened in the West, where people were saying, more or less, ‘Well, you don’t have any regulations, so we’ll set up here, and we’ll basically pay you a lot of money and foul up your air.’ So before any of that could happen, we jumped ahead. Now we have regulations and we don’t have to worry about our air being degraded.”

The small reservation presently has little acreage on which facilities can find room to locate, but Dunn says a tribal effort to increase its land base will result in new potential industrial sites.

Since the tribe’s TIP effort began, says Dunn, several facility operators have approached St. Regis with business plans. Some have requested open-ended pre-construction “permits” to emit, but so far, she says, none has specified precisely what pollutants, in what quantities, they intend to release (one emitter began operating but has since suspended operations). “Those applications are on hold,” she says, “until answers are forthcoming.”

The TIP is comprehensive enough to serve the tribe’s immediate and future needs, although they are considering one addition: an “idling law” controlling when and how long vehicles may idle on tribal land, based largely on ambient

temperature. “We’re not trying to just tell people what to do,” Dunn says of the potential new law, which will apply to mobile sources that include semis parked at local truck stops and casinos. “We’re looking at other things, such as installing a ‘SmartWay’ where there will be electrification for trucks so they don’t need to idle. It gets pretty cold around here.”

St. Regis has an environmental compliance officer, but “he’s split among all the departments, so he’s pulled in a lot of different

If you would prefer to receive an e-copy of Native Voices rather than a paper copy, please contactLydia Scheer at lydia.scheer@nau.edu,and we'll put you on our e-mail list.

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Mar. 25–28 Mgmt. of Tribal Air Programs & Grants Lawrence, KSApr. 1–3 Indoor Air Quality in Alaska Anchorage, AKApril 7–11 Air Quality Computations Flagstaff,, AZApr. 28–May 2 Air Pollution Technology Las Vegas, NVMay 20–23 Tribal Data Toolbox Flagstaff, AZ

Regional EPA Tribal Air Program Contacts

For contact information on U.S. EPA's regional tribal air staff, visit the web at:

www.epa.gov/air/tribal/coordinators.html

Swinomish Woodstove Change-Out Program Helps Clear Tribal Air—Inside and Out

W hen the Swinomish Indian Sen-ate learned in 2002 that wood-stoves were a major cause of

respiratory problems for tribal members, they decided to act. As a result, the inci-dence of asthma attacks, breathing-relat-ed hospital visits, and indoor-air prob-lems in general among tribal residents of Fidalgo Island in western Washington State has been drastically reduced. Mold inside the now-drier homes has likely

diminished, and the ambient air is clean-er, too. Through the program, the tribe has even taken a crack at global warming.

Air Quality Analyst Tony Basabe, who first presented research on indoor air, health, and woodstoves to the tribal

governing body, says respiratory issues among tribal members have, ironically, increased in recent years as home insulation and weather proofing has improved. “It isn’t just the stove itself,” he says, “it’s how it interacts with the house. About 80 percent of these [old] stoves were getting their combustion from house air.” Before insulation and weatherization projects resulted in tighter homes, stoves drew oxygen from

cracks and openings, and most of the combustion products—but certainly not all, as Basabe’s research has indicated— went up the chimney. Tighter homes meant that air for combustion was reduced, and “back drafting” into the house became the rule, particularly when kitchen and bathroom fans or dryers were run. The old stoves would suck air down the chimney and out into the house.

Basabe’s indoor-air studies showed that, if ambient air standards for

PM2.5 were applied inside homes using the old stoves, “We would have been violating the ambient standards indoors, and far worse.” With the new stoves in place, he estimates, the tribe is keeping approximately 30 tons of particulates

each year out of the ambient air as well as a significant amount of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming.

The stove change-out program was managed mostly by Swinomish Air Technician Lynette Ikebe, who Basabe says, “made it happen. She handled getting the instruments, doing reimbursements for parts and labor, all the administrative stuff, which was huge.”

The change-out project got its initial lift as a regional nonprofit organization, Northwest Clean Air Authority, received Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) money from regional polluters, part of court settlements that channeled violator money into environmental projects. The tribe partnered with that organization and the Bellingham Opportunity Council, obtaining the first several dozen stoves for the change-out (tribal money was later used to purchase the remaining 86 stoves). With some aggressive wheeling and dealing (Basabe says putting out repeated bids, and making them public, drove the prices down dramatically), the tribe began installing new stoves for tribal members

—see SWINOMISH on p. 6

Lynette Ikebe (left) and Tony Basabe standing beside a recently installed, EPA-certified wood stove.

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Summer Scholars '08: Creating Sustainabi l ity in Schools

T his past year EEOP has partnered with the Rocky Mountain Research Station to provide an opportunity to get more students out of the class-room and into the forests around Flagstaff. This program provides an

opportunity for forest professionals to interact with high school and middle school student and provide mentoring and instruction on how to promote forest restoration and conservation.

In the fall of 2007, EEOP's staff worked with three schools to collect data comparing treated and non-treated forests around Flagstaff. The students collected data on basic land cover, biomass, canopy cover, wildlife activity, and fire fuel buildup.

The Flagstaff High School environmental science class learned to use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to set up test plots in the Fort Valley Research Forest, north of Flagstaff. They also used Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) protocols to describe and classify the test plots. Tuba City Junior High students conducted biomass and canopy cover studies of the test plots. Shonto Middle School conducted fire fuel assessments. Each school group had the opportunity to work with Forest professionals with experience related to their specific studies for that day. The students used field guides and binoculars to observe and record various species of birds, mammals, and reptiles.

We would like to invite other schools and professionals to get involved in this project, which will continue during the spring of 2008. For more information please contact Matthew Zierenberg at matthew.zierenberg@nau.edu.

T he EEOP Summer Scholars has pro-vided a valuable educational experi-ence for Native American students in

middle school and high school since 1999.

Last year we were only able to plan and complete one week of Summer Scholars. Thanks to the Arizona Science Foundation, we have funding for five sessions this year.

The program provides Native American high school students a week-long, pre-college experience that emphasizes applied mathematics, science, and technology focusing on local environmental issues. Students are encouraged to consider mathematics, science, and technology careers that require post-secondary education.

The topic for Summer Scholars 2008 will be “Creating Sustainability in Schools.” Students will work on one of four taskforces: Energy, Water, Building, or Transportation. A major focus will be on reducing air pollution, including carbon dioxide. Each taskforce will develop recommendations for their school district on how to save money and reduce the environmental impact of their school operations.

This summer's premise is: “If your school was given a million dollar budget to renovate the school, how would you use this money to reduce operating costs and minimize pollution. Ultimately, the

savings should be used to repay the million dollars, allowing the funding to be passed to another school for a similar purpose. In other words, how

would you use a Perpetual Green School Fund?”

Students will look at the current costs of lighting, transportation, heating and cooling, and building maintenance. Through hands-on experimentation, field trips, guest lectures, and problem-based learning, students consider alternative methods for reducing these costs and estimating the long-term savings, while taking into account environmental

impacts of the changes. The EEOP staff anticipate that Summer

Scholars will share their findings with their school board and staff.

The EEOP staff are currently recruiting schools to participate in the Summer Scholars 2008 program. If your school is interested, please contact Mansel at mansel.nelson@nau.edu.

We would also like to invite teachers or tribal environmental professionals who are interested in learning more about developing academic enrichment programs for middle school and high school students to join the EEOP staff for a week. The teacher or tribal environmental professional would learn by doing—this would be a professional internship. For more information contact Mansel at mansel.nelson@nau.edu.

EEOP Branches Out with Forestry Education Program

Mansel A. Nelson (left), EEOP Senior Program Coordinator, talks with Shonto Preparatory Middle School students about bio-diesel.

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at a substantially lower cost than the nonprofits were charging—and with tribal staff administering the installations, that side of the cost equation was reduced dramatically as well. Mechanical permits were required for each new stove changeout. After installation, a certified building inspector inspected every new

stove. The old stoves were taken to the local metal recycling center and affidavits of destruction were obtained to ensure that the old, smoky wood stoves didn’t end up being used elsewhere on the reservation.

Over the past few years, nearly all tribal members who have requested stove upgrades have received them. A few opted for propane stoves, he says, though some have come to regret that choice, as oil prices have driven up the cost of propane substantially. “Some have come back asking to have woodstoves installed,” he says, “but we have to tell them we can’t do that, because this is an upgrade program.” Fortunately, propane change-outs amounted to a fraction of the total.

The installations, which include upgraded venting either from crawlspaces

or from vents that draw air directly from outside the house, have already resulted in a substantial reduction in asthma-related problems,

including emergency room visits and hospital stays. Basabe says the Senate’s decision to embark on the program (“I think

they realized they’d get back ten times the savings

at the health center”) has paid for itself many times over, in both dollars and community health.

One lesson they’ve learned with the new stove installations is the critical need to “pre-burn” the stoves before installing them in homes. Basabe says the release of toxins into homes with new stoves can be severe, particularly during the first 24 hours of operation, when toxic

releases from new paint and treatment in stoves early in the program can send people to the tribal health clinic. Basabe’s own research brought the problem to light; stove makers, he says, have

been reluctant to make that data available. “We’ve shared that research with the Nez Perce Tribe,” he says, “and they’re doing the same in their change-out program.”

Now that most tribal homes have the upgraded stoves, the project is continuing on a different track. Outreach is ongoing, with efforts to educate tribal members on the need to burn seasoned wood rather than the green, freshly cut wood that burns inefficiently. Widespread use of green wood, says Basabe, could negate the effectiveness of the entire program. Fortunately, he says, “we have some real smart burners around here. They know what they’re doing.” One plan (which has not yet materialized due to several logistical challenges) is to create a “wood bank” from which year-old wood is taken in trade for freshly cut green wood. Available storage space on the ten-square-mile reservation is at a premium, and the tribe’s remote location makes it difficult to bring in wood from outside for the bank. But Basabe says “Things are possible if you think outside the box, if you do things differently,” and the idea has not been discounted.

One such effort, which complements the stove change-out program, involves the tribe’s decision to stop burning forestry “slash,” chipping the excess wood instead. That change resulted from a tribal resolution to address climate-change issues. Firewood that tribal members cut from that slash is burned in the more-

—SWINOMISH – from p. 4 efficient woodstoves, lessening ambient pollution and utilizing the waste to a more-productive purpose. Chipped slash residue is also used to shore-up areas of riparian and coastal erosion.

Basabe continues to research the impacts of the new stoves on air quality and tribal health. In addition, the tribe is trying to extend the benefits of the change-out program to nontribal members living on fee lands within tribal boundaries, so that they too can enjoy improved indoor air quality and contribute to the total reduced ambient pollution on the reservation.

For more information, contact Tony Basabe at tbasabe@swinomish.nsn.us.

I think [the Tr iba l Senate] . . . realized they’d get back ten times the savings at the health center. —Tony Basabe

National Tribal Forum

Please join us in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 3–5, when tribal air profession-als will meet with staff from ITEP, the National Tribal Air Association, and U.S. EPA, to discuss: –tribal air-management, –budget and policy issues, –trends in tribal air and public health, –climate change, –mercury monitoring, –tribal New Source Review, –indoor air quality, and other important topics.Registration deadline is April 25. A limited number of travel scholar-ships are available. Application deadline for travel support is April 11. For more information, visit the ITEP website at http://www4.nau.edu/itep/and click on "2008 NTF."

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ITEP's Environmental Inspection and Compliance Program: Meeting Tribal Needs

C onducting environmental inspections in Indian Country can be a complex matter, not

only because of the demands of the inspections themselves but also due to the regulatory and bureaucratic concerns that go with the territory. ITEP’s Environmental Compliance and Inspections (ECI) program seeks to address those complexities with an expanding roster of classroom train-ing courses that generally employ Native instructors and always offer instruction from a tribal perspective.

The program offers an introductory Tribal Basic Inspector Training course, one of several requirements for federal credentials, which covers federal regulations (and how those regulations apply on tribal lands), general inspection techniques, regulations regarding the public’s right-to-know, and record-keeping; and “media-specific” courses that address pesticides, water pollution discharge systems, and underground-injection wells. New courses dealing with Underground Storage Tanks and hazardous waste management are being considered for future development. “In our courses we always try to use two tribal experts,” says ECI’s Program Coordinator, Todd Barnell, “and we also bring in EPA staff. EPA offers some of these courses, but ours are specifically designed to address inspection issues in Indian Country.”

Barnell says that, although gaining federal-inspector credentials is a major goal of tribal course attendees, the program can be valuable to tribal environmental professionals whether or not they ever obtain federal inspection authority. “Probably about 30% of the people who attend our courses end up getting federal credentials,” he says, “but the training we

offer also qualifies attendees to do inspections under their own tribal authority. I think some of the big questions that tribal applicants should ask when they consider ECI training include, ‘What does my tribe need most?’ and “Can we do inspections under our own tribal codes and ordinances?”

A number of tribes across the country have developed codes and ordinances governing pollution levels and controls; with the required training, tribal inspectors learn not only how to employ the “stick” of enforcement, when necessary, but (just as importantly) the cooperative skills necessary to help head-off problems before they arise—this is the “compliance” aspect of the training. Barnell recounts the story of two tribal rangers who attended a recent course after being assigned to address illegal dumping on their reservation. During the realistically rendered mock inspection training segment that is a part of each course, one of the officers began his “inspection” in a confrontational manner that resulted in his inability to gather the information he needed. The officer began again, this time employing cooperative techniques he’d learned earlier in the training. In doing so, he achieved a positive result that drew compliments from

his classmates. “One of the keys to compliance is bonding, working together,” Barnell says, “and noting the shared value of keeping the environment clean. The officer wasn’t used to operating this way. He learned something, and he told me later that this was the best training he’d ever attended. It’s very gratifying to me to see that light go on.”

Barnell says that not everyone who attends the courses will do inspections. “Unlike ITEP’s air training,” he explains, “we don’t require that people take the basic course before they can attend media-specific courses. Sometimes tribal staff just want to be better versed on

what EPA inspectors are doing on the reservation, or on what contractors are doing. A one-person environmental staff might be performing other environmental work and want to better understand water or pesticide issues. Occasionally someone attends a course and it helps them decide they don’t want an inspection program at all. We even get EPA instructors under a program that brings retired EPA employees back into the workforce as volunteer inspectors.”

Many tribes these days are developing environmental codes and ordinances, creating a greater demand for tribal inspectors. “When we started this program in 2002,” Barnell says, “most of our attendees were from Region 9. Now we’re seeing a huge increase in folks from Regions 5, 6, 8 and 10. I think it’s exciting that so many tribal

ECI Program Coordinator, Todd Barnell.

—see ECI on p. 8

Native Voices

Institute for Tribal Environmental ProfessionalsPO Box 15004Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5004Phone: (928) 523-7792 Fax: 928-523-1266

www4.nau.edu/itep

Address Service Requested

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ITP 35QD

environmental professionals are now doing their own inspections. That’s a real testament to the development of tribal environmental capacity.” For more information, contact Todd Barnell at 928-523-3840, todd.barnell@nau.edu. NOTE: To assist the growing number of tribes developing pollution-control regulations for their reservations, the ECI Program will soon launch a new course, Tribal Codes and Ordinances, to be presented this year. For more information, please visit www4.nau.edu/itep/eci.

Generally, EPA accredits tribal

inspectors based on Regional needs.

To obtain federal credentials, tribal

inspectors must complete a basic inspector

course; relevant media-specific courses

(accreditation is based on specific media);

and an accredited, 24-hour health and

safety course.

EPA has discretion on accrediting

tribal inspectors and has the option of

not accrediting tribal inspectors if their

own staff can handle Regional inspection

demands.

Regional EPA offices make decisions on

tribal accreditation

Information uncovered during a federally

credentialed inspection is accessible to

EPA and the public.

Obtain ing Federal Credentials

ECI Training Schedule for FY 2008April 22-25 2008: "Tribal Basic Inspector Training" Denver, Colorado

July 22-24 2008: "Media Specific: NPDES course" Seattle, Washington

October 2008: "Tribal Environmental Regulations and Codes Development" Denver, Colorado

2008 Tribal Solid Waste Education and Assistance Program Training

March 25-27 2008: "Source Reduction Strategies for Tribal Solid Waste Programs" New Orleans, Louisiana

May 22-24 2008: "Developing a Tribal Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan" Saint Paul, Minnesota

August 12-14 2008: "Identifying, Eliminating, and Regulating Illegal Dumps in Indian Country" Denver, Colorado

ECI–cont. from p. 7