Seward: The State Department of Environmental Conservation, in cooperation with the City of Seward, and Qutekcak Native Tribe, has installed air quality monitors at three locations around Seward. The project hopes to determine whether the ambient air quality we commonly breathe surpasses National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). After almost two years of discussing with Seward residents and then with city officials the need for air monitors, they are finally installed, operating, and they began taking samples January 12-14. The vacuum-filtered samples are taken every sixth day over a 24 hour period. The filters are collected by Ike Dotomain, a member of the Qutekcak Native Tribe, trained by DEC. Dotomain will send them once a month to a state DEC lab in Juneau for analysis. The project is funded through a grant with the Alaska Native Health Consortium. 

Two monitors are on the roof of the Seward Community Library, another is at the Seward Mountain Haven Long Term Care Center, and the forth one is at the beachside Public Works lift station along Ballaine Boulevard. 

Dotomain climbed a tall ladder to the roof of the library Monday afternoon to remove the filter placed up there three weeks earlier. Due to safety reasons, he was unable to get the filter from the air monitor earlier, he said. The filter’s color was slate grey compared to its bright white boarders, and the roll of paper towel he carried. 

“That’s three samples, and look how dirty it is. And look how white it was,” Dotomain said. “That’s dust we’re breathing right here.” The other station’s filters, which he properly removed after every six days, had also appeared dirty, but not nearly as dirty as that one, he said, and the filters at the long-term care facility barely showed a difference. 

The monitors use electricity to run a vacuum motor which pulls the ambient air through the filters at regular intervals during each sample period. The monitors record the amount of air flow, as the filters collect the smallest particles, while keeping large particulate matter out, said DEC Air Quality Program Manager Barbara Trost. 

DEC lab workers will weigh the filters’ mass, and compare each one to their particular weight prior to operating in Seward. They will also calculate the filter’s PM10 “particulate matter” with an aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to a nominal 10 micrometers concentration. If the weight of the filter, measured with an air flow of 1000 liters (or 1 cubic meter) per minute is larger than 155 micrograms, the health standard has been exceeded, Trost said. If the filters show a concentration higher than 155 micrograms per cubic meter more than once within one year of testing, then the area is considered to be in violation of the ambient air quality standard, she said. 

What the DEC lab will not do however, is analyze the particulate matter collected to show what it consists of—whether it is fugitive coal dust, road dust, or naturally occurring silt from off the mountains or streams, Trost explained. In other words, the current project won’t provide answers to Seward’s frequently asked question–how much dust seen swirling around town can be attributed to coal facility operations, glacial silt, or road dust.  Not unless the filters show we are close to, or have exceeded the air quality standards. In that case, the DEC plans to have the heavy filters sent to another lab for analysis, Trost said.

Her agency does not do industrial monitoring and that’s why the monitors are not placed adjacent to, or directly down wind from the coal facility, Trost said. With this project, DEC’s mission is to test the general ambient air quality—especially in areas where there are vulnerable populations, such as of seniors and children, she said. 

If, after a year, the concentration of PM10 has not come close to violating air standards, DEC will consider whether it is cost-effective to continue the study for another year or possibly two. If there is a proven problem however, DEC may, in consultation with the city and community, decide to continue the study for longer, and possibly change the location of the monitors.  

Regardless of whether the air monitors prove it to the state’s satisfaction, Dotomain, who lives here, believes that Seward clearly has an issue with dust. “In the springtime everybody’s using their blowers to clean out their driveways,” he said. “It’s a lot of dust: a combination of glacial silt, coal dust, and everything. And you’ll see pollen this spring. The whole air will just turn green.” 

Russ Maddox, who serves on the Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance Board of Directors, is disappointed with the state DEC’s air monitoring programs limitations, but is pleased that the City decided to help quantify the dust problem. He is planning to start some citizen’s environmental air quality monitoring to provide more comprehensive data. RBCA and Alaska Community Action on Toxics are in the preliminary stages of developing an air quality monitoring project with Global Community Monitors of El Cerrito, California. The project will utilize volunteers to collect air samples upwind and downwind of the coal terminal during windy periods to cross-reference with the DEC’s ambient air monitor’s data. GCM’s equipment will also be used to collect samples for analysis to determine what the coal dust content is. Global Community Monitors is experienced with assisting communities in quantifying their air pollution, Maddox said. They would provide portable equipment and the training to operate it by EPA standards so that along with the City monitor’s data as background, both data sets will provide a good overall picture of Seward’s air quality.