Local oil and gas emissions to be monitored in Mountain View County, Eagle Valley-Eagle Hill region

MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY – An Ad Hoc Committee of the Parkland Airshed Management Zone (PAMZ) has announced the initiation of an air quality monitoring project funded by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) as part of a creative sentencing arrangement.

Beginning this month, PAMZ will utilize its Dr. Martha Kostuch portable Air Quality Monitoring Station to monitor local oil and gas emissions in Mountain View County, specifically in the Eagle Valley-Eagle Hill region.

“PAMZ has chosen this project based on feedback from Mountain View County, who have received complaints from residents in the Eagle Valley-Eagle Hill region concerning air quality. We are hopeful the results will provide valuable insights into the area’s air quality,” said PAMZ Executive Director Kevin Warren.

This location was proposed by Mountain View County, following a PAMZ Community Information Session held in Olds in July, where several air monitoring opportunities in the County were identified by members of the public.

Funding for this initiative stems from a 2021 incident involving the release of hydrogen sulphide from a gas well, which resulted in an $80,000 penalty for an area organization. Of this amount, $2,000 was paid as a fine to the Alberta Court of Justice, while the remaining $78,000 has been allocated to the creative sentencing project overseen by the AER.

PAMZ submitted a bid to the AER to use its Dr. Martha Kostuch portable Air Quality Monitoring Station to either address a specific air quality issue identified in the Mountain View County region or collect data to enhance the organization’s knowledge base on the air quality in the area in general.

The Parkland Airshed Management Zone Assoc. (PAMZ) is a multi-stakeholder non-profit organization consisting of industry, government, environmental organizations and the general public. It was formed in 1997 to monitor and manage air quality within the Parkland Region. The area it encompasses includes communities within the central Alberta region, running from Three Hills in the east to the BC border in the west and from just north of Crossfield in the south to just north of Ponoka in the north. See map at www.pamz.org.