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Section 5 <br />The following analysis is a summary of an Air Quality impact Report prepared for <br />the Mid Basin Centennial Park Injection Well Project by BonTerra/Psornas in <br />October of 2015. The Air Quality Report is presented in its entirety in Appendix B. <br />5.2.1 Affected Environment <br />The project site is located in the City of Santa Ana and within the South Coast Air <br />Basin (Basin). The Basin consists of Orange County, all of Los Angeles County <br />except for the Antelope Valley, the non-desert portion of western San Bernardino <br />County, and the western and Coachella Valley portions of Riverside County. The <br />basin is an and environment with little rainfall and abundant sunshine occurring <br />during the summer months. The topography and climate of Southern California <br />combine to make the Basin an area of high air pollution potential. During the <br />summer months, a warm air mass frequently descends over the cool, moist <br />marine layer produced by the interaction between, the ocean's surface and the <br />lowest layer of the atmosphere. The warm upper layer forms a cap over the <br />cooler surface layer and inhibits the pollutants from dispersing upward. Light <br />winds during the summer further limit ventilation. Additionally, abundant sunlight <br />triggers the photochemical reactions that produce ozone and the majority of <br />particulate matter. The region experiences more days of sunlight than any other <br />major urban area in the nation except for the City of Phoenix <br />Attainment Status <br />The EPA and the ARB designate air basins where ambient air quality standards <br />are exceeded as "nonattainment" areas. If standards are met, the area is <br />designated as an "attainment" area. If there is inadequate or inconclusive data to <br />make a definitive attainment designation, they are considered "unclassified." <br />National nonattainment areas are further designated as marginal, moderate, <br />serious, severe, or extreme as a function of deviation from standards. Each <br />standard has a different definition, or 'form' of what constitutes attainment, based <br />on specific air quality statistics. For example, the Federal 8-hour CO standard is <br />not to be exceeded more than once per year. Therefore, an area is in attainment of <br />the CO standard if no more than one 8-hour ambient air monitoring values <br />exceeds the threshold per year. In contrast, the Federal annual PM2r5 standard is <br />met if the 3-year average of the annual average PM2 5 concentration is less than or <br />equal to the standard. <br />The current attainment designations for the Basin are shown in Table 4. The <br />Basin is designated as nonattainment for the state and federal ozone, PM10, and <br />PM2 5, standards. The Basin is also in nonattainment for the state nitrogen <br />dioxide annual standard, based on the 2006-2008 data. Based, on more recent <br />Mid Basin Centennial Park�jnlLProject Final EIR 5-16 <br />