Sulphur dioxide emissions in Central Alberta are already much lower than the provincial government’s air quality targets, says the executive director of the Parkland Airshed Management Zone.
Kevin Warren said he doesn’t really have an issue with new air quality objectives the government posted last month for the pollutant sulphur dioxide. “It doesn’t matter in our region because we are well underneath the hourly objectives,” he added.
These have remained unchanged at 172 parts per billion.
That number was an issue for former Alberta Environment air and water approvals director David Spink, who now works as a consultant.
Spink aired his concerns in an Edmonton newspaper this week, having promised the late environmentalist Martha Kostuch before she died in 2008 that he would go public if the government backpedalled and weakened proposed sulphur dioxide objectives, as Kostuch feared.
Spink said Alberta’s hourly limit of 172 parts per billion of SO2 is higher than what the Americans recently approved and what the World Health Organization has recommended.
Alberta’s number is 33 or 50 per cent higher than both the U.S. and the WHO numbers, Spink told the newspaper.
But Warren said the U.S. rules allow a certain number of exceedances per year, while Alberta’s don’t.
“People have to remember that the objectives set in Alberta are a tradeoff between what’s technically or economically feasible and what’s socially and politically acceptable,” he added.
Central Alberta has lowered sulphur dioxide levels in recent years because PAMZ has worked with industry to reduce flaring. As well, Warren said gas plants in the area are older and are reducing their production levels.
SO2 levels in other parts of Alberta, for instance, near the oilsands, are much higher.
But Warren said the provincial hourly objectives “have worked for us up to now” — although he later added that PAMZ members will likely discuss whether they should have been reduced.
The federal government also has plans to come up with national targets for SO2 and a wider range of compounds over the next few years, said Warren, who believes Alberta may have to readjust its standards at that time.
As far as Central Alberta is concerned, he said other pollutants, such as rising nitrogen oxide levels from vehicles along the Hwy 2 corridor, are of greater concern.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com