Excellence in Personalized Assistance - “Doing more with less”

“Doing more with less” is what UNI’s Iowa Air Emissions Assistance Program (IAEAP) is all about. Iowa’s small manufacturers, grain and feed facilities, auto body shops, gasoline distributors and dry cleaners (along with many other small businesses) have received free, confidential assistance as part of this program, to help them meet federal and state air emission laws.

IAEAP is a program designed to train, assist and educate Iowa small businesses on air emission regulations enforced by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The program is funded by the Iowa DNR Air Quality Bureau to provide free, non-regulatory air quality assistance to small businesses. Since DNR’s funding sources have recently decreased, the contracted grant to IAEAP has also been reduced. IAEAP now operates with reduced professional staff and limited funding for administrative costs, materials and travel. However, that hasn’t stopped the program from continuing its many accomplishments. Even with limited resources, IAEAP continues to excel at helping small businesses increase business efficiencies, save money and reduce air emissions with its effective outreach tools and successful compliance assistance methods. The IAEAP continues to create and improve effective outreach methods for thousands of customers each year, while also maintaining exceptional personalized assistance to hundreds of businesses. Last year, IAEAP completed 45 comprehensive onsite visits in 32 Iowa counties. It also provided detailed one-on-one assistance to 64 clients and brief assistance to an additional 130 clients by phone and email. Clients had the opportunity to evaluate IAEAP on its detailed assistance over the last year and the results showed that of the survey respondents, (100%) rated IAEAP’s services as “excellent.” Additionally, all of the survey respondents stated that they would also use IAEAP’s services again and would recommend services to other regulated businesses. The federal Clean Air Act requires every state to have a free, non-regulatory small business compliance assistance program. The IAEAP is Iowa’s program and is part of UNI’s Iowa Waste Reduction Center, which is an organization that is devoted to environmental consulting, assistance, training and education for entities with an environmental impact or need.