Borough residents voice air quality concerns

PALMER — Concerned members of the community came to voice their opinions on the legislation proposed by the Planning Commission on air quality.

“It will help prevent going into non attainment and it’ll save the borough quite a bit of money. I’d like to say this legislation’s pretty cut and dried like a good stack of wood,” Adrian Baer said.

The Planning Commission originally took up public comment on the new regulations at its Dec. 3 meeting. Following the Nov. 30 earthquake, they elected to continue public comment on Resolution 18-29.

“One of the things that this does not do this legislation in no way does it regulate people’s ability to heat their home with wood,” Borough Planner Ted Escheid said.

Escheid and Brianne Blackburn, also a Borough Planner, briefed the planning commission on the thorough coordination and communication with the community, including a meeting at Butte Elementary on Jan. 22.

“A lot of people who disagreed with our analysis came up and said thank you for coming and the lesson I got out of that is we should go there more often,” Escheid said.

The air quality in the borough has not reached a state of non-attainment with the Environmental Protection Agency, but when standards were lowered, the Borough was within 80 percent of the limit and decided to take matters into their own hands rather than waiting on federal regulation.

“Right now our data suggests we can get it under control with a limited approach,” Blackburn said. “There wasn’t much of an appetite for a borough wide solution for a localized issue and that was the feedback we got and what we incorporated into a more targeted approach.”

Measurements of PM 2.5 were at 35.1 when the Department of Environmental Conservation lowered their acceptable standard to 35.5. PM 2.5 levels are measured on a three year average, and the data that the borough has been collecting at their sites in Palmer and the Butte is trending in the right direction.

“Actually the last couple years our air quality has improved,” Escheid said. “We really want to avoid exceeding that standard because with it comes a lot of regulatory and economic consequences imposed by the federal government and we really don’t want that to happen to the Mat-Su Borough.

The borough’s efforts have focused on education on what can and cannot be burned, and alerting residents to bad air days. On days when cold, clear air sits over the Valley, specifically in the Butte, smoke can sit at a low altitude due to the cold weather inversions. These conditions are only likely to happen a few days a year during the cold months. Blackburn said that on average there are only between two and four bad air days for PM 2.5. Questions were asked by members of the public about the frequency of high PM 10 measurements which is more likely to occur in the spring or fall with high winds. Director of Health Promotion for the American Lung Association in Alaska Ashley Peltier shared alarming statistics that the ALA keeps on air quality nationwide. In 2018, the Mat-Su Borough received a failing grade in the State of the Air report put out by the ALA and ranked 14th worst in the nation for 24-hour particle pollution. In comparison, Fairbanks ranked worst in the nation for 24-hour particle pollution. Blackburn provided additional data on the health impacts of high PM 2.5 levels.

“A decrease in that amount was associated with a 3.5 percent reduction in all caused mortality. This was across a study of 6 cities in over a 16 year period of time,” Blackburn said.

Many of the members of the public who commented on the resolution were in favor, but some offered tweaks. Charles Laird suggested that burn barrels were outdated and needed to be outlawed altogether.

“As far as the whole borough goes, I think all of us want to breathe clean healthy air and it’s bad enough that we already have to breathe all that glacial dust all the time,” Jared Hixon said. “We can do nothing about that but we can do something about the air pollution.”

The resolution was approved unanimously and will now go before the assembly for adoption.

“We know that too many of our residents are breathing poor air,” Peltier said. “There is a wide body of scientific evidence that demonstrates the negative health effects of poor air quality.”

Contact Frontiersman reporter Tim Rockey at tim.rockey@frontiersman.com.