The efforts of the residents of the North Nechako, North Meadows, Edgewood, and Heritage subdivisions in Prince George seem to have paid off.

The residents complained long and hard about emissions from asphalt plants, they raised the awareness about standards and non -compliance.

They have succeeded in bringing about change.

As the City prepares for a new paving season, it is preparing new tender documents for a three year contract with a paving company.

What is new, is that the tender documents will reflect the City’s desire to have reduced emission standards met by the successful company. “The document includes incentives for companies to adhere to new emission standards.” says Glen Stanker of the City’s Transportation Division. He will not specify exactly what those incentives include or what the new emission standards might be, however, it is clear the Ministry of the Environment will soon announce new standards which must be met in a certain time frame. Those standards will likely be phased in, but the documents being prepared by the City will offer incentives to those companies which , in Stanker’s words “ make the changes sooner rather than later.” Stanker says there has already been discussion with the asphalt plants about the changes in the tender documents.

One company has already made changes. Columbia Bithulithic has made $800 thousand dollars worth of upgrades to reduce emissions of fine particulate.

In late January, the City sent a letter to the Ministry of the |Environment asking for some changes before the paving season was to begin. That letter requested changes to the asphalt regulations including changes to the stack testing. Currently stack tests are required yearly or every other year. Unless the plant is new, there is nothing that prevents the company from carrying out its stack test near the end of the paving season. That means companies could operate out of compliance for the whole season. The letter also called for changes that would make asphalt plants in urban environments to burn natural gas and disallow the use of waste oil fuel. The other two requests call for the introduction of a permitting system and change the allowable limits as follows:

There  are some who say the requested reductions  don’t go far enough, and others who say  the City should be persuing  the  option of  issuing permits to asphalt  plants.  "Permits are the way to go" says Dave Sutherland. He used to be with the Ministry of the Environment and is now the Chair of the Air Quality Implementation Committee.                                      

Sutherland says  you have to take into acount a lot of  things like the local topography, the location of the plant and what other sources are in the area, "There are a  whole host of   factors that can be managed  through the permit system that can’t  be managed  under a regulation and for our sensitive, over  committed airshed,  I think it is a must that we have to go to permits."