The City of Red Deer celebrated Clean Air Day by receiving an environmental award for its Idle Free Zone campaign.
Kevin Warren, executive director for the Parkland Airshed Management Zone, presented Mayor Morris Flewwelling with the inaugural Action Hero Award on Wednesday.
“Earlier this year, PAMZ created its Action HERO Award Program as one way of encouraging local businesses and organizations to take up new initiatives to reduce the formation of ground-level ozone,” Warren said at the presentation ceremony outside the Red Deer Public Library downtown branch.
The Action for Health and the Environment by Reducing Ozone program is a component of a larger extensive Ozone Management Plan that the regional airshed developed in 2008 and will implement in stages over the next 10 years.
“At higher concentrations, ground level ozone can result in respiratory and other health problems, damage vegetation and crops, and lower our quality of life,” Warren explained.
“It’s not a serious problem yet in Central Alberta and PAMZ wants to keep it that way.”
The city was recognized for the campaign it started in the fall of 2009 to remind motorists to shut off engines when parked.
Flewwelling credited the success of the initiative to residents who were inspired by the benefits the municipality experienced with its Corporate Idle Free Policy.
Nearly a year after the December 2008 policy launch, the city saved 32,023 litres of fuel and over $32,000 due to a reduction of emissions from civic fleet vehicles.
“Just because we have clear skies today doesn’t mean that we’ll always enjoy those clear skies unless we do our part to make sure that is sustainable,” Flewwelling said.
Prior to presenting the award, Warren made a clean air presentation during the lunchbag seminar series at the library.
He informed a small audience that the air quality in Red Deer is “pretty good” but every individual must take steps to ensure it stays as is.
“You can last a day with out water, you can last a few days without food,” he said.
“How long can you last without air?”
The first step, he said, is to conserve energy at home and work.
“If you think of it in terms of every time I flick on my light switch I’m burning coal, that might be a little bit of an incentive for you to want to conserve some energy,” Warren said, explaining most power in Alberta is coal-fired.
Some of his other suggestions included stop idling, limit vehicle use, use environmentally safe paints and cleaning products, regularly change the furnace filter and buy renewable electricity from companies such as Bullfrog Powers.
Warren purchases renewable energy, or wind-powered energy, for his Calgary home and said it only costs an extra $10 per month.
The complete list of what individuals can do to reduce air pollution can be viewed at www.pamz.org.
PAMZ was formed in 1997 as a non-profit society that monitors air quality and manage air quality issues in the Parkland Region.
ptrotter@www.reddeeradvocate.com