GA EPD Fall Visible Emissions Evaluation and Certification Training (Smoke School)

Fellow Smoke Readers,

The fall 2013 Georgia EPD Visible Emissions Training and Certification classes are approaching and it's time you clean your folding chair, check that your ink pens still write and find that old clipboard.  Most important is that it's time to register for the upcoming schools.  There have been some changes in the program that we want to make you aware of.

1. Beginning this fall cycle, each person will bre required to register in the Georgia Environmental Connections Online (GECO) system in order to receive a certificate upon successful completion of one of our certification programs.  If you are a facility that normally registers all of your employees you will need a seperate registration account for each person you register.  Each registrant will need a unique email address.  There will be an opportunity to take the certification test at one of our classes without registering, however before a certificate is sent to the participant he/she will have had to be registered for the class (either before or after the event.)  The following web-link will take you to the point where you can begin to register for GECO. 

http://www.georgiaair.org/airpermit/html/ismp/smokeschool/index.html

 2.  Last spring we offered a new one day certification opportunity in Perry, GA.  The weather didn't cooperate but the event was still successful.  We are planning to continue the one day opportunity in Perry and add a new one day certification opportunity in Cartersville, GA.  The dates for the September and October schools can be found on the above web-link. All of the dates and locations are available for registration. Weather contingency dates for the one day certification events at Perry and Cartersville are the days following the scheduled events.  All of the other schools are multi-day events so no contingency dates are expected. 

3.  A number of participants have had trouble receiving their Smoke School certifications by mail.  Part of the reason is issues with the registration process and the database we are using. Part of the problem is participants using different addresses when registering in GECO or when they register on site.  Please review and update the addresses in your or your employee's GECO registration account.  That is the address we will use to send certificates for the near future.  Hopefully by the spring cycle you will have the ability to print your own certificate from our web site and we will no longer have to mail them. 

4.  In case of bad weather threatening to cancel a training day we will send out a message to the Smoke School Listserver which will go to all of you that have received this message.  Consider registering under your home, work, or even smart phone e-mail addresses on our Smoke School Listserver so that you can receive messages outside of duty hours if needed.

5.  If you have any questions about signing up for the Smoke School listserver or registering for a GECO Smoke School account you are welcome to contact Jeff Babb at  jeff.babb@dnr.state.ga.us.

Look forward to seeing you at Smoke School.

Jeff Babb, Art Hollis and Bob Scott