Residents and City Staff say their meeting to discuss air quality issues, as they are related to the asphalt plants in the City, went well.

The City’s Manager of Environment, Mark Fercho says the point of yesterday’s meeting was to put together the final pieces in the report he will present to Council. “I wanted to make sure the message I take to Council about what the residents want to see done, their suggestions and their priorities is an accurate account of what they want.”

He says the meeting saw representation from not only those along the North Nechako road area, but residents from all over the north west sector of the City.

On the residents side, they say the meeting was constructive and they believe City Staff understand their concerns. Further to that, the residents have put together a detailed package outlining their main concerns and  their suggestions for change.

The residents outline says the top priority is to get the City to honour the “1999 commitment to neighbourhoods to not proceed with asphalt processing in return for acceptance of soil removal as per the subsequently developed soil removal bylaw.”

Here are the four key points presented by the residents.  They appear here as a direct reprint of the original document:

1. Relocation Plan

In the end this land use conflict can only be resolved by relocating the incompatible users. The longer this situation is left the more difficult and expensive it will be to correct. As outlined at the July 24^th meeting, steps to implement the following actions need to be included;

• Placing a moratorium on new heavy industrial development on the Otway bench.
• Rezoning the Otway bench to a land use compatible with residential development.
• Implementing a relocation plan that involves features such as crown land exchanges and industry compensation if appropriate, to move heavy industry to a suitable location that does not jeopardize air quality within the city.

2. Best Pollution Control Technology Until a relocation plan can be implemented, there is a range of technological solutions that are not being used by the local asphalt industry, and are not being promoted by the city. These include technologies to protect against health threat and against nuisance threats. Particulate and plant emissions are of main concern from a health perspective, while nuisance factors such as noise, odour and opacity affect quality of life and property values.

• Threats to health can be substantially reduced by the use of pollution control equipment such as thermal oxidizers that burn emission contaminants and modern bag houses that control particulate dust.
• Nuisance factors can be substantially reduced by sound engineering, scrubbers and filtration systems.
• The report should contain an assessment of best available technology, by qualified environmental engineers, that could be applied in stressed air shed situations such as in Prince George.

3. Best Management Practices Best management practices can provide some immediate pollution mitigation as well. There are examples of best management practices used by the aggregate and asphalt industries elsewhere that can be surveyed to see what other communities have successfully done to mitigate impacts on residential neighbourhoods. The report should include a benchmarking of what is being done in jurisdictions such as the Greater Vancouver Regional District or states such as California and North Carolina where air quality has been a major issue for decades. Adjustments to work procedures can often make a significant difference.

An obvious example of a BMP for Prince George is to not operate during an air quality advisory.4. Effective Management Standards and Controls

There has been a barrage of citizen complaints this summer targeting the asphalt operations that have been fielded by regulatory bodies that appear to not have the controls necessary to bring asphalt operators into compliance. Even if standards were met, they are not adequate in an air shed like in Prince George which Ministry of Environment considers a closed air shed with respect to industrial air emissions. Everyone understands the problem. The valley topography and frequent atmospheric inversions in Prince George capture and hold bad air. Provincial regulations are designed for average atmospheric conditions and do not address the unique airshed situation in Prince George. The report needs to address the question of what are appropriate standards for this situation and what is an effective way of enforcing them? The following concepts need to be addressed in the report;