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State and National Area Designations
With the establishment of state and federal ambient air quality standards each air district is responsible for developing plans and implementing programs to meet the standards and maintain pollutant concentrations below the standards. An air district is designated "attainment" if it has met the standard for a given pollutant, and "nonattainment" if it has failed to meet the standard. A district may go from a nonattainment status to an attainment status if for three consecutive years it has not violated the standard.
The Feather River AQMD is part of the Sacramento Valley Air Basin (SVAB) that includes Butte, Colusa, Glen, Tehama, Shasta, Yolo, Sacramento, Yuba, Sutter, and parts of Placer, El Dorado, and Solano Counties. Since air pollution has no boundaries, portions of one county nearer a problem area may be nonattainment for a specific pollutant where the balance of the county is in attainment for the pollutant. As a result attainment/nonattainment "area" designations are determined and the responsible air district must develop stricter air quality programs applicable to their portion of the nonattainment area. In addition, nonattainment areas are further classified as marginal, moderate, serious, severe, or extreme indicating the magnitude of air quality standard exceedances.
[See:
FRAQMD Area
Designations]
[See: State and National Area
Designations and Maps]
 | The California Air Resources Board (ARB) makes State area designations for nine criteria pollutants: ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, suspended particulate matter (PM10), sulfates, lead, hydrogen sulfide, and visibility-reducing particles. Each year, the ARB reviews the area designations and updates them as appropriate, based on the three most recent calendar years of air quality data. Click here for current ARB activity. |
Note: FRAQMD is either attainment or unclassified for the remaining State standards: nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, PM2.5, sulfates, hydrogen sulfide, lead, and visibility reducing particles.- FRAQMD is designated Nonattainment for the State Ozone and PM10 standards.
State Area Designations
Unclassified: a pollutant is designated unclassified if the data are incomplete and do not support a designation of attainment or nonattainment.
Attainment: a pollutant is designated attainment if the state standard for that pollutant was not violated at any site in the area during a three year period.
Nonattainment: a pollutant is designated nonattainment if there was at least one violation of a State standard for that pollutant in the area.
Nonattainment/Transitional: is a subcategory of the nonattainment designation. An area is designated nonattainment/transitional to signify that the area is close to attaining the standard for that pollutant.
| The Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) makes National area
designations for five criteria pollutants: ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide,
sulfur dioxide, PM2.5 and PM10. The U.S. EPA established a new eight-hour ozone standard in July 1997 to replace the one-hour ozone standard. As part of the Sacramento Federal Nonattainment Area (SFNA) South Sutter County (from the Yolo County Border to the Bear River, and south of Yuba County) is designated Nonattainment for the 1997 National 8-hour Ozone Standard of 0.08 ppm. The EPA lowered the 8-hour Ozone standard in 2008 to 0.075 ppm. The designations for the new standard have not yet been published. For information on the new Ozone AAQS, please go here. |
Designations for National 8-hour Ozone Ambient Air Quality Standards (AAQS):
- South Sutter County: FRAQMD is Severe Nonattainment for the Federal 8-hour Ozone AAQS in the southern portion of Sutter County (generally south of Subaco Road). Note: The SFNA Districts requested to be "bumped up" to a Severe Nonattainment area in February 2009.
- All of Yuba County and the balance of Sutter County: Unclassified/Attainment
Designations for National PM2.5 AAQS:
-All of Sutter County and the majority of Yuba County have been designated as Nonattainment for the 2006 National PM2.5 standard of 35 µg/m3.
Note: FRAQMD is either attainment or unclassifiable for the remaining Federal standards: nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and PM10.
Federal Area Designations
Unclassifiable: any area that cannot be classified on the basis of available information as meeting or not meeting the national primary or secondary ambient air quality standard for the pollutant.
Attainment: any area that meets the national primary or secondary ambient air quality standard for the pollutant.
Nonattainment: any area that does not meet (or that contributes to ambient air quality in a nearby area that does not meet) the national primary or secondary ambient air quality standard for the pollutant. See Classifications.
Air Quality Trends
Yuba and Sutter County is located in the Sacramento Valley Air Basin (SVAB). Approximately 60 - 70% of the District's air pollution comes from mobile sources, which includes on-road and off-road motor vehicles (cars, trucks, planes, trains, tractors, combines, buses, motorcycles, boats, and so on). The District's population is projected to increase to 192,700 residents by the year 2010 (a 50% increase over 1990 figures). The urban expansion resulting from this growth will result in an increase of vehicle miles driven which means that emissions from mobile sources will continue to increase. The remaining 30 - 40% of the District's air pollution is a result of stationary sources that include agricultural operations, open burning of vegetative wastes, wood burning for residential heating, manufacturing industries, electric generation industries, diesel backup generators, retail gasoline and local bulk distribution facilities, auto body shops, dry cleaners, landfills, other manmade sources emitting air contaminants, and naturally occurring sources (non-manmade emission sources, including biological and geological sources, wildfires, and windblown dust).
