The Erie Board of Trustees listened to an air quality and monitoring presentation Sept. 15 in an effort to update the town’s Unified Development Code —- Chapter 12 regarding oil and gas.
This chapter includes standards relating to air quality.
Several local influences, such as emissions of oil and gas pollutants, were shown by presenter Detlev Helmig, of Boulder AIR LLC, to have a large impact on air quality around air monitoring sites located outside of Erie. Some of these pollutants include methane, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Volatile organic compounds, such as ethane, benzene and acetylene also have an influence on poor air quality.
“We live in an area here that is subjected to several air pollution problems,” said Helmig in an email. “Ozone, particulate matter and elevated levels of volatile organic compounds including benzene.”
During the meeting, Helmig explained to the board how the air was monitored in the area by five different monitoring sites. These monitoring sites are active all day throughout the year and provide real-time data reporting to public websites within 10 minutes of recording.
Locations of these sites are at the Boulder Reservoir, the Longmont Municipal Airport, the Longmont Union Reservoir, Broomfield Soaring Eagle and Broomfield Livingston. Data collected by these sites are reported to the Boulder AIR website for Boulder, Longmont and Broomfield.
“They’re sensitive enough to capture the full range of the concentrations that we see in the air,” said Helmig.
Helmig mentioned there is also a new website that combines the data recorded from each of the five stations. This data is then presented in a graph so it can be compared.
In order to get air quality data in the town of Erie, they would have to get a monitoring station, said Helmig.
“With the way that the environment’s going and the federal government’s protection of the environment, I think that we need to be doing everything we can to monitor and be on top of some of these types of things,” said Trustee Bill Gippe.
Several graphs shown in Helmig’s presentation indicated some pollutant levels were fairly similar when recorded, such as ozone and particulates. However, there were other pollutants that had very different concentrations across the stations, such as volatile organic compounds like benzene, ethane and acetylene.
“You can see there’s some variables that are very similar across the network, but then others are not,” said Helmig. “From these comparisons you can easily tell this is some pollution source right in your neighborhood.”
Trustee Christiaan Van Woudenberg stated in an email the intent of having Helmig present is to ultimately have a permanent air quality monitoring station in Erie to monitor the impacts of oil and gas operations on local and regional air quality.
“Once the board majority decides to move forward, we’ll be looking at a number of vendors to provision a solution but will be heavily influenced by the experiences of neighboring municipalities such as Broomfield and Longmont,” Woudenberg wrote. “Given the town’s priorities for the year and the financial constraints of COVID-19, I do not expect any movement on this effort in 2020 but expect it to be on the 2021 work plan.”
Woudenberg says he expects oil and gas development to bear the cost of air quality monitoring to ensure the health, safety and welfare of Erie residents.
An audit of Helmig alleges he committed fiscal misconduct, including diverting business to his private company and costing the University of Colorado Boulder more than $700,000. In a rebuttal to CU Boulder’s allegations, Helmig’s attorney, former state Rep. Joe Salazar, lambasted the university and its investigators for relying on speculation, being incompetent and directing ill will toward Helmig.
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September 21, 2020 at 11:26PM
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Erie Board of Trustees hear air quality presentation - Colorado Hometown Weekly
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