The story of the BVLD Airshed Management Society and our Clean Air Plan began in November 2002 in the presence of dinosaurs and a lot of gas.
Astronomer Harlow Shapley calculated that each breath you exhale contains 30 zillion atoms of argon. Using argon as a marker, he calculated that these atoms will have spread around the planet and 15 of them will be right back where they started. This means that we are breathing the same air as dinosaurs and our great, great, great grandchildren will also be breathing that air. In other words, air connects us to the past and to the future, and what we do to the air we do to ourselves.
To
really understand air quality, we must first understand air. The composition
of the air we breathe is:
- Nitrogen (N2) 78.084%
- Oxygen (O2) 20.947%
- Argon (Ar) 0.934%
- Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 0.033%
- Other trace gases
This balance is slowly changing mostly due to fossil fuel burning (CO2 and other gases increasing).
In the Bulkley Valley- Lakes District, smoke and road dust contribute what we call "particulate matter" into the air. PM10 and 2.5 are very small - so small that they can be breathed deep into our lungs.
On days where there is no wind and/or there are many sources of particulates, this pollution gets trapped in the valley creating two problems: health impacts and poor visibility. Both these problems affect our enjoyment of this beautiful place, restrict the quality of life for people who have a hard time breathing under these conditions, and cost local business and the healthcare system a significant amount of money.
Mountain communities are prone to thermal inversions, meaning that cold air and any pollution in the air get trapped below a blanket of warm air. A build up of pollutants because of inversions or a windless day can trigger air quality episodes.
Beginning in the early 90s, many people became concerned about the negative impacts of poor air quality on public health and the tourism economy. In 1999, the Ministry of Environment published an airshed management plan. An airshed is a geographic area that, because of emissions, topography and meteorology typically experiences similar air quality. As our understanding of air quality and airsheds improved, the need for a new plan became obvious and the Ministry of Environment initiated a process to get communities more involved in creating a solution.
To create a plan that would work, we followed the following steps:
1) Invite people from all sectors (public, government, industry) to help write the Plan based on common sense and science. From the beginning we worked on building consensus on what will work and what is practical given financial and legal resources.
2) Identify the sources and seasons of particulate matter. Using common sense and an emissions inventory, we know the big sources in our airshed are:
Emission
Source |
Season |
| road dust | spring |
| backyard burning | spring, summer, fall |
| space heating | winter, spring |
| forest harvest debris burning | spring, fall |
| beehive burners | all seasons |
| debris burning from small sawmills, agriculture operations, and landclearing. | spring, fall |
| other industrial permitted sources | all seasons |
3) Study the weather and the air quality, based on readings from data collection stations. In the BVLD, we have seven monitoring stations. Each year, the air quality meteorologists at the Ministry of Environment produce a report on the health of our local air quality, including the number of episodes by month. Episodes are determined by the concentration of particulates in a cubic metre. Provincial and federal guidelines determine when a burn ban or health advisory is issued. Here is a summary of episodes for the last 10 years.
4) Develop goals, indicators and strategies to reduce the number of episodes caused by each emission source in consultation with emitters and regulators.
5) Monitor the Plan for effectiveness and use communications to educate the public and recognize contributions to protecting air quality. Our five year plan for clean air runs from 2004 - 2009 and is reviewed once a year through a community forum and by the Board of Directors for our society.
Click on What's the Plan to see the end results of our 5-step process.
