Air quality program starts next week

Pima County's new Green Valley Air Quality Monitoring Project will be launched next week.

Officials of the Pima Department of Environmental Quality (PDEQ), federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the locally based Neighbors Against Pollution (NAP) will dedicate the new air quality monitoriing and reporting system Wednesday, May 10 at a 1 p.m. ribbon-cutting at the Conrad Joyner-Green Valley Library, 601 N. La Caada Drive.

The public is invited to both the ribbon-cutting at the library and on a short trek to the nearby monitoring station itself, according to Frances Dominquez of PDEQ.

The new monitoring equipment will check particulate matter (dust), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and sulfur dioxide (SO2), along with gauging wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity and other meteorological data.

The station is being funded by about $55,000 from the PDEQ, including in-kind services, and a one-time grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of $185,000.

PDEQ is to install more sensitive particulate monitoring equipment than what it has operated in Green Valley in the past.

The new monitor will detect particulate matter down to PM 2.5, or 2.5 microns in size. The previous monitor detected particulates down to 10 PM.

A human hair is about 60 microns.

The more sensitive particulate monitor will operate seven days a week, around the clock, and be valuable to very young and elderly residents, who proportionately have the most respirator-related problems among the population.

Information that the air outdoors is carrying very minute particulate material can be especially valuable because those "small" particles penetrate deeper into the respiratory system than do larger particles, potentially causing serious health effects for persons with existing respiratory concerns.

Monitoring VOCs also will be done at the station. Those compounds can come from over 100 different sources and can cause respiratory and allergy problems for persons sensitive to them.

PDEQ officials think that VOCs could be the culprit behind long-standing complaints from residents west of La Caada Drive that something in the air, particularly at night and in low-lying areas, is foul-smelling and making them sick.

Testing for the presence and levels of sulfur dioxide also will be done at the monitoring station.

That is at the insistence of Neighbors Against Pollution (NAP), a residents' organization formed to investigate the complaints about air that makes its members ill.

NAP members have focused their attention on the former Cyprus Sierrita mining operation (now Phelps-Dodge) west of Green Valley, and on its molybdenum roaster in particular.

Cyprus was cited by the EPA in 1997 for alleged violations of air quality standards in a case that the agency has forwarded to the U.S. Justice Department.

Company officials have maintained that no federal air quality standards were violated.

EPA officials have recently sent a fifth information request to the company regarding its investigation of whether air quality standards have been violated in the past.

It will be up to the Justice Department to work out a settlement on any sanctions with the company, or take the matter to the courts.