And this would allow five commissioners to attend a working group meeting, which I think was going to
come to the GCP same year. That would be in the future. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that means, I mean, right
now we have 11 commissioners. So that would be in the last year, we have successfully had five
that's every single meeting anyhow, so it really would be, I mean, the holidays are coming up, so it'd
be mostly a thing if we need to reschedule a meeting, because many people know that they would be unavailable
with 10. So just another nudge to, if you know that you're gonna miss a meeting, shout it out, so that
way if it's enough people that we wouldn't meet at quorum, we'd reschedule on time, or cancel the meeting
if we have to. Any other thoughts on this before I consider voting?
That's reasonable. Yeah. I have no issue with it as recommended. Previous adjustments were really dictated
by circumstances anyway. If we come into that circumstance again, we can always come back and change
it. I figured as much. So yeah, I feel supportive. Is there a motion? I motion to accept the change
to six. Second. OK.
Clear your mouth everybody. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
And Heidi, this chair is open, I'd be glad to be here. That's a great point. That's a great point. I'm
just kind of over at the table with the rest of the meeting. Don't worry about me. All right. All right.
Well, sounds good. Thank you all for moving through that so quickly. We are on to the Sustainable Energy
Utility Capstone Project, which is listed under Matt and Heidi. Last week we had, or last month we had
a visitor who proposed having the EC available to
way in on various steps of the project. Would either of you like to update with anything? I included
Matt because I think he's still on it and should be invited as a member for it. Heidi emailed me I think
earlier this month, maybe even the last month, and just provided some language
to give to, I think his name is Alex, to provide back to Alex. So I included that in the packet. Heidi,
did you have anything else to say about that? No, I guess the packet goes to Alex. All right,
I guess like, did everybody have a chance to read this? So I don't know if it requires about having
to take a vote, but if everyone is slightly revolt sending this to Alex or has anything else to add,
I can send it or not, you can send it. I was gonna say, I don't even imagine that a vote is necessary.
I mean, this is one of those things where they were just, they already had a project pretty well laid
out and they wanted to know, they wanted more eyes on it to say, is there anything we're not thinking
of? Is there anything on here you think is bad? And so I read Heidi's suggestions and I think whether
we send it to Alex or whether I direct him to look at our packet, I mean, one way or another, they can
see if they want to add
any of that to their existing capstone project. So it's great if someone had feedback. I didn't really
have much when I initially read it, but. Thank you for sending something. Not a lot of consent about
voting on it. No. Matt will encourage people to still look at it or just tell people to look at it.
Right. Or no. No. And now. Oh, now. And now. I expected that to be a lot later. Do you want me to scoot
out of the way? No. OK. Is now OK, or do you want someone in the motion to move it on the agenda? No.
That's just in case you were actively eating this. Oh, no. It's fine.
Okay, so just for some context, this is my senior thesis presentation.
I've only grabbed that a handful of times. Actually, you might be able to. It's going to be right click
previous that you can sit for less. I'm sure you can present this after this meeting. I'm going to present
this on December 5th at the O'Neill Honors Symposium. So this is part, you can volunteer to do the O'Neill
Honors Program. And if you do that, you write a thesis and then you present it before you graduate.
All right, so 50 years ago, when Congress passed the Clean Air Act, they imagined a future in which
science would shape environmental protection. Today, political decisions and societal pressures still
shape the air we breathe. Hi, my name is Nadia Kane. I am a senior graduating this semester with a bachelor's
of science in environmental management. And today I will be talking about the socioeconomic and political
drivers of Clean Air Act enforcement. Maybe.
So for a little bit of background, obviously you guys have somewhat of an education on this, but the
Clean Air Act serves to regulate six criteria air pollutants called CAPS. It sets national ambient air
quality standards for these pollutants, which are sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, particulate matter,
2.5 microns in size, lead, ground level ozone, and carbon monoxide. It delegates most of the enforcement
of these national ambient air quality standards to the states.
However, 5% of enforcement is done at the federal level, and that is the focus of my thesis. It's also
pertinent to know that the Clean Air Act sets standards for vehicles and fuel efficiency, but that is
not what I'm using in this presentation. So when I decided I was going to focus on Clean Air Act enforcement,
obviously I had to do a literature review. And I'm sure you won't be surprised to know that the literature
is vastly contradictory.
across time, across space. So there are mixed results as to whether enforcement is affected by politics.
There are results at local levels that suggest it is. There are results at state levels that suggest
the EPA is resilient to outside forces. And there's not a lot about enforcement at the federal level,
which is why I felt it was pertinent to focus on that thesis.
So with this in mind, I ended up with the research question of what socioeconomic and political factors
may have driven trends in federal Clean Air Act enforcement from 1989 to 2024. And I chose this time
frame because 1989 is when my advisor and I felt that EPA had consistent and reliable data recorded,
even though the Clean Air Act and EPA went back to 1970.
So then I created a variety of hypotheses. So first, I thought that Democratic presidential administrations
and their EPA administrators would see more enforcement actions over time. It's also pertinent to note
that I'm measuring three enforcement actions, so informal, formal, and inspections at the federal level.
So I anticipated that Democrats would do more and Republicans would do less. I also anticipated that
public policy mood and macro partisanship in the United States wouldn't correlate with