Silver Valley Air Quality Monitoring Report

The following Air Quality Report will be reviewed at the February 23, 2021 Community Services District (CSD) meeting. A ZOOM link to this meeting is posted at the following CSD website. https://www.newberrycsd.net/2021-02-23-board-of-directors-meeting.

AIR QUALITY MONITORING REPORT FOR CSD BOARD

February 23, 2021

Silver Valley Air Quality (AQ) Monitor Deployment Report

Figure 1 – Current Silver Valley Air Quality Monitors

  • 13 air quality monitors are currently deployed at 9 separate physical locations. One physical location has five separate monitors – four at the Mountain View solar plant and one across the street at a residence.
  • The previously nonfunctional monitor at the Newberry Fire Department has now been moved next door to the Newberry School. It is back online.
  • Purpleair ordering information for the CSD Board-approved, five-monitor purchase was forwarded to the CSD office on 1/19/21. The order was placed on 2/10/21.

Next-up Monitor Deployment Focus Areas

The two next-up focus areas for monitor deployment are shown in the black boxes, below. The left-hand black box is the Daggett airport (and immediately upwind) area. The right-hand box is the “frontline” Newberry area; the area closest to and most exposed to possible blowing dust and sand from the Daggett solar project.

Figure 2 – Next-up Monitor Deployment Focus Areas

AQ Wind Event Data Example

The following AQ monitor map is an example taken at 4:33 PM from the Saturday, February 13th wind event. It’s obvious that the PM2.5 AQI on Mt. View road is higher than in the surrounding area.

Figure 3 – Site-specific February 13th Wind Event Dust Example

This is a zoomed-in closer look at the February 13th wind event PM2.5 dust example. It shows an increase in windblown PM2.5 dust only at (and just east of) the current Mountain View solar project. The wind was from the left (West).

Figure 4 – A Closer Look at the February 13th Site-Specific Wind Event Dust Example

Voluntary Data Archiving Example

As a volunteer, I have started archiving data for all of the 13 currently-deployed AQ monitors. This archived data includes:

Hourly Averages for  PM2.5 dust for each monitor plotted over an entire week.

The following is an example from the CSD building AQ monitor. One data point is plotted for every hour over the entire week ending February 15th. The US EPA PM2.5 AQI averaged over the entire week was 17.4 (see the lower right-hand corner). the wind speeds at the Daggett airport on February 13th are shown in the graph following the hourly AQI averages. The blue dashed line shows the likely cause (high wind) of the February 13 AQI spike. Rember that the CSD building monitor is shielded from the west wind by 1) the hill just ot the west and 2) the CSD building itself. Without this shielding, the February 13th spike would very likely have been higher. A review of the airport wind data from February 10-12 (when the winds were low) indicates that the February 10-12 AQI spikes were likely NOT due to the wind. These spikes may have been due to local air pollution, possibly smoke.

Figures 5a & 5b – Feb. 13 1-Hour Averages Compared to Feb 13 Wind Speeds

  • Daily Averages for PM2.5 dust for each monitor plotted over an entire year. The following is an example from the CSD building monitor. One data point is plotted for every day over the entire year ending February 15th.  The US EPA PM2.5 AQI averaged over the entire year was 10.5 (see the lower right-hand corner). The right downward-sloping line indicates that the monitor was out of service (no data) from June through December of 2020 therefore the yearly average of 10.5 is very likely too low however the daily averages shown while the monitor was in service are very likely correct.
Figure 6

Suggested Air Quality Monitoring Responsibilities (Who does what?)

  1. AQ monitor deployment (Resident, Volunteer Assist, Info Sheet on CSD website)
  2. Data Monitoring (Resident, Volunteer Assist, Info Sheet on CSD website)
  3. Data Archiving (Resident, Volunteer Assist, Info Sheet on CSD website)
  4. Data Analysis (Resident, Volunteer Assist, possibly a paid consulting service)
  5. Data Report Writing (Resident, possibly a paid consulting service)
  6. Follow up with Government Agency or Other (Resident)

Communicating Public Information about Air Quality Monitoring

I suggest we create an Air Quality Monitoring Public Information section on our website. This would help to inform the community about 1) formal CSD information (ex: public comments that we’ve received, monitors that we’ve deployed) and 2) informal information (ex: how to install a monitor, archive data, etc.).