AQS Tribal Users,

In the last two or three years, our office has been required to provide EPA headquarters with a periodic analysis of which tribes have reported to AQS. At times, this task has been difficult because of inconsistencies in site/monitor meta data needed to identify data as being collected or reported by tribes or data collected and reported by other agencies but using tribal funding as the primary resource.

Also, a separate tribal database has recently been developed to be used for this reporting analysis. This tribal database will be periodically updated with new information from AQS. To simplify the routine extractions to update this tribal database, a consistent coding procedure for site/monitor meta data would be useful.

This email is to propose a consistent coding procedure for tribal data. The consistency that I would like to propose for all tribal data includes:

1. Use the tribal code to register any site that is located on tribal land or is operated or supported by tribal resources. The code for the specific tribe would be used. We have only registered tribal codes for tribes that we know have requested a new screening group or had agency codes assigned before the current 3-digit tribal codes were used. Any tribal agency code can be registered upon request, Even though the site would be registered with the tribal code, the geographic codes are also assigned in the system and could continue to be used for submitting data.

2. Code the tribal agency code as the site supporting agency and as monitor agencies ( reporting agency, PQAO, Collecting, analyzing) based on the roles that apply.

3. Code the monitor type as "Tribal Monitors" to allow for retrieval by that classification for regular reports.

I have attached an Excel file that lists the sites that we have identified as tribal based on a tribal support agency or a tribal code (column G) assigned to the site. The query to create this file and other tribal data sets could be simplified if all tribal sites had a tribal code assigned to them. Our office could easily complete this task for all of the sites that have a tribal agency code (column E) assigned. The tribal agency code in column J could be added to the sites where the tribal code is currently missing. This is the same code as column G which represents the tribal support agency code. This action would complete #1 above for all sites that we know are tribal.

Please notify me if you concur with our office performing this update by identifying the tribal code (column J) that should be used for the update.

Thanks,

Jake Summers

National Air Data Group

OID/OAQPS/OAR/EPA

C339-04

Research Triangle Park, NC 27711

(919) 541-5695 (Phone) (919) 541-7674 (Fax)

summers.jake@epa.gov