Mountain View County residents to be consulted on local airshed project
The Parkland Airshed Management Zone Association (PAMZ) will be launching an air quality monitoring project within Mountain View County following a successful bid with the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER).
The funds were made accessible through a creative sentencing after an area organization was recently ordered to pay an $80,000 penalty after release of hydrogen sulphide from a gas well in 2021. While $2,000 was provided to the Alberta Court of Justice as a fine, the remaining $78,000 was put towards a creative sentencing project, overseen by the AER on behalf of the Alberta Court of Justice.
The project had to occur within Mountain View County boundaries, or within immediately adjacent counties, and demonstrate benefits to air quality, promote pollution prevention and management, and/or have demonstratable benefits to first responders, hospitals, local authorities, or educational establishments.
PAMZ submitted a bid to either target 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 using its Dr. Martha Kostuch portable Air Quality Monitoring Station.
Residents of Mountain View County will have the opportunity to contribute their input on the project during an upcoming engagement session to be held at the Community Connection Centre in Olds (4911 51st Avenue) on the evening of Tuesday, July 23 from 6:30-8:30 PM. The session will be hosted to garner public feedback to help determine where the air quality monitoring could take place in the county.
“PAMZ is looking forward to moving ahead with this project and is grateful to the Alberta Energy Regulator for selecting our bid for air quality data collection in the Mountain View County region,” said Kevin Warren, executive director for PAMZ. “We are eager to meet with the public to discuss the best location to gather this information.”
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.