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Utah DEQ trainers walk reporters through Slice emissions submission and April 15 deadline
Summary
State division staff demonstrated logging into Slice, navigating facility reports and entering process emissions; they emphasized the April 15 reporting deadline, the importance of accurate release‑point and SEC selection, and offered guidance for emergency and rental generators.
Katherine Williams of the Utah Division of Environmental Quality led a virtual Slice training for facility reporters, demonstrating how to log in, navigate the report dashboard and submit annual emissions inventories. She reminded participants that the 2025 annual reports are due April 15 and that the division will send a reminder around April 1.
The training walked attendees through the dashboard’s top tiles — facility, release points, control devices, emission units and process emissions — and explained common entry points that often trigger validation errors. “They are due April 15th,” Williams said, noting that earlier submissions make it easier for division staff to respond to data questions.
Trainers emphasized data‑quality choices that affect modeling and billing. Williams told participants that the inventory data “goes directly to our modelers and that’s how they figure out, you know, what can we do to make things better so that we get back under the standards that the EPA sets for us.” She showed how to edit release‑point parameters (stack height, diameter, coordinates), advised updating default values with site‑measured figures and explained the division’s preferred use of the ‘permanently shut down’ status (with an appropriate prior year) if a unit is removed from service.
On unit processes, trainers recommended picking the most accurate SEC (source classification code); some SECs include emission factors that can auto‑populate required pollutants and calculation methods. Using a boiler example, Williams demonstrated adding PM10, NOx, SO2, VOCs and CO, choosing calculation methods and supplying emission factors or hard‑entry tonnage when spreadsheet totals are the source of truth. She also showed a practical tip for saving progress: enter a temporary round number in a required field to unlock the save function, then replace it later with measured values.
The session covered the operations tab (how start/end times and monthly percent distributions translate into annual hours) and the two-step submission process: validating reports to resolve errors, checking the small “mark ready for submission” box and completing the electronic submission. Trainers noted common submission problems — account lockouts, forgotten passwords and challenge‑question formatting — and urged attendees to use the ‘forgot password’ function or contact staff for resets.
In the Q&A, participants asked about emergency generators, rented units and generators newly added but not yet on permits. The trainers said that when sites cannot allocate fuel use to individual generators, an initial practical approach is to estimate allocation or to report total fuel use across a grouped unit process for the reporting year. “If you can’t make an estimate, then maybe you say ‘we used all of the fuel,’” one trainer said, then encouraged facilities to install hour meters or individual fuel tracking to improve future reporting accuracy. On portable rental generators, Williams noted the division is preparing non‑road guidance that would include portable units and said the guidance is not yet in effect but that such emissions are useful to the division’s inventories.
Katherine Williams and Elizabeth Slade closed by saying they will post the training recording to the Slice training videos page and email it to attendees, and invited facilities to contact division staff for help locating SECs, correcting validation errors or completing submission.
