MINUTES OF MEETING OF THE
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON
PUBLIC SAFETY AND SOUR GAS

21st July 2000
12 noon to 4:00pm
Board Room – 14th floor
Energy Resources Building

ATTENDEES

Committee Members

Regulatory Support

Committee Members and Regulatory Support Staff Absent

Guests

Richard Roberts - Praxis

MINUTES

1. Opening Comments

The meeting was opened and members welcomed by the Chairman.
Minutes were approved as distributed and will be placed on web site.

Preliminary matters:

Arden indicated that the Board would be releasing its first annual industry flaring performance report soon and he will advise the committee of its release via e-mail.

Don Beamer, a senior technical advisor in the EUB’s Technical Services Branch was introduced to the Committee. He will be available to assist the Prevention, Policy and Jurisdictions Working Group and others as required.

2. Review of Input via Web site and E-mail

Praxis provided the Committee with summaries of written submissions and response forms received formatted by the template used for individual session summaries.

Praxis has provided the Committee with 2 full sets of binders, 5 volumes each, which contain individual templates of outreach sessions by location. These sets are available for use by Committee members. Committee members should contact Marilyn or Aliya if they would like to use a set.

3. Random Sample Survey

Praxis provided the Committee with a draft quantitative report of the survey results broken down by urban and rural respondents. A qualitative assessment is also being prepared and will be provided to the Committee. Praxis reviewed the highlights of the report. The Committee asked that the report identify actual numbers of individuals who responded for each question as well as the statistical number shown. Working groups can already use preliminary report in their efforts to prioritize issues.

Action Item: Committee needs are to identify other ways that they would like to see the data broken down (eg: communities) and advise Richard by Thursday July 27. Praxis will choose 5 or 6 questions, breakdown and send e-mail as an example to committee to see if further breakdowns are needed.

Action Item: Praxis will develop a more detailed report, developed into Broad challenge areas where possible, and incorporating comments received. The revised report will be completed by August 4 and forwarded to the Committee. Further review and discussion will take place at the August 11 meeting.

4. Update of Aboriginal Outreach Process

Doreen provided the Committee with an overview of Aboriginal sessions held to date and an update of others planned. Individual session summaries are being developed and will be provided to Committee members to be used in their on-going work. Praxis will be developing a summary document of all Aboriginal sessions held once they have been completed. The summary will be mailed to the participating communities and placed on the Committee’s web site.

5. Feedback to Outreach Participants

The Committee agreed to send thank you letters along with copies of session summaries to all participants of the outreach process thanking them for their input. The letter will indicate that the detailed individual session notes will be used by the Committee as it continues with its work. The letter will also indicate that the participants will receive a copy of the “Directions Document” once it is completed later this fall along with further information regarding the Committee’s next steps and how they can participate in the fall.

Action Item: Praxis will prepare a thank you letter for the Chairman’s signature and will send them to all participants along with a copy of the session summaries.

6. On-going Working Group Assignment

Work is continuing to re-write the issues list to incorporate public input. The Committee was provided with a first draft of the re-worked Policy, Prevention and Jurisdiction section for review and comment. A discussion took place regarding the format and content of the document.

It was agreed that the list will become Appendix C of the Committee’s report. It was also agreed that the document would be kept to a reasonable size so that people would read it, while being careful not to lose any of the key points that were raised, and that it needed to be made clear throughout the document that the statements made are opinions of people and not necessarily fact.

Action Item: Marilyn Craig and David DeGagne will re-work the Prevention, Policy and Jurisdiction section and prepare a first draft of the other working group sections. A draft will be provided to the committee once it is complete.

7. Working Group Reports

• Prevention, Policy and Jurisdiction
  

  The working group has identified driver issues using the draft issues list and is now continuing its work to identify ways of addressing the issues. Issues have been split into various categories such as: the EUB – processes, reputation, bias; Jurisdictional Overlap eg. Municipal and Health Authorities; industry practices – processes, training, certification; Monitoring; Development Planning – leasing system, proliferation; Enforcement/Regulation.

The group is planning to invite experts to speak to them at future meetings on various topics.

A discussion took place regarding how much detail should be included in recommendations being made by the Committee to the Board. It was agreed that they needed to be specific enough to allow action to be taken but that it would not be appropriate for the groups to do a lot of work that results from recommendations. It was noted that some of the recommendations may result in major undertakings that need significant resources (e.g. pre-leasing planning). The groups should feel free to make general, broad recommendations, and where specific recommendations can be made they should do so (eg. EUB resourcing – make recommendation that EUB needs sufficient staff to do certain things).

• Communications and Compensation

The working group had invited EUB Applications group staff to their morning meeting to further discuss the Applications process and to answer specific questions. A web site user report was provided – the site had over 3000 hits during this reporting period.

The group will be dealing with the issues of mental health and compensation at the next meeting.

• Event Consequence Management

The working group had focused its morning meeting on the on-going toxicology and dispersion modelling work currently underway. Experts had been asked to respond to a questionnaire on toxicology and several responses had been received. A dispersion expert is doing work to compare emergency planning zones (EPZ’s) and setbacks to results of current modeling work.

Work will continue on the re-write of the issues list and identifying driver issues.

Dr. Wilson provided the working group with an overview of work currently being done at the University of Alberta on lethality.

The working group discussed the need to further clarify the Committee’s public health and safety mandate to make sure that it does not get into areas that it cannot manage. It was agreed that members need to challenge each other to ensure the group stays focussed on the committee mandate.

The Committee agreed that there is a need to ensure that the full Committee has ample opportunity for vigorous discussion of issues and solutions. The 3 day workshop in September will be an opportunity for this, however there may be a need for other full Committee meetings as well.

8. Other Matters

Praxis tabled a draft of an approach the Committee could take to the 2nd round of outreach in the fall. This item will be discussed as an agenda item at the August 11 meeting. Committee members are invited to pas any comments to Richard prior to the meeting if they wish.

9. Next Meetings

August 11 and August 31, 2000 – West Hall