Dr. Bryan Shaw Named New TCEQ Commissioner

Today, Governor Perry appointed Dr. Bryan W. Shaw of Texas A&M University in College Station to become the third commissioner on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, filling the vacancy left by Kathleen White. Buddy Garcia will remain TCEQ Chairman.

Shaw will be able to vote on matters right away, but will need to be confirmed when the Senate meets again next session.

Dr. Shaw is the Associate Director of A&M’s Center for Agricultural Air Quality Engineering and Science and is an Associate Professor in A&M’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering.

Dr. Shaw has significant expertise in air emissions and modeling. He teaches, researches, and writes on the development of accurate emission factors for feed and grain handling, development of air pollution dispersion models, emissions from cattle feed yards, fugitive dust emissions from field operations, processing of agricultural products, and indoor air quality. His refereed journal articles have focused on emission factors for grain receiving and feed loading operations and on particle size distribution of cattle feedlot dust emission.

Dr. Shaw has served in several national advisory capacities. He is a member of three committees for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board: Environmental Engineering, Integrated Nitrogen, and Risk and Technology Review. He was reappointed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Air Quality Task Force. And Dr. Shaw spent 2002-2003 with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Washington, D.C., as the Acting Lead Scientist for Air Quality and the Special Assistant to the Chief for Air Quality.

He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his Bachelor and Masters of Science in Agricultural Engineering from Texas A&M. He is a member of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and has chaired their Committees on Environmental Air Quality, Cotton Engineering, Ergonomics Safety and Health, and Environmental Quality and Control. He also is a member of the Texas Section of American Society of Agricultural Engineers.

For additional information regarding this appointment, please contact John Howard of Vinson & Elkins at 512.542.8564.  

EPA Proposes to Broaden Flexible Air Permitting Options

Yesterday, EPA proposed revisions to both the Title V operating permits program (codified at 40 C.F.R. Parts 70 and 71) and the new source review (NSR) program (codified at 40 C.F.R. Parts 51 and 52) to make more broadly available options for flexible permitting, which allow sources to make certain types of physical and operational changes without further review or approval by the permitting authority. Follow this link to view the full e-lert.

For additional information on EPA’s proposed flexible air permitting rule, please contact Eric Groten or Patrick W. Lee. Follow this link to learn more about Vinson & Elkins' Environmental Regulation Practice.