Buncombe County Government, NC Buncombe News Updates, 6 May 2016

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From YouTube: News Update - 2016 Ozone Season Kickoff

Description

Air quality officials from local and state levels recently held an "Ozone Season Kickoff" at the Land-of-Sky Regional Council. Ozone season begins in April and lasts throughout the summer. Topics discussed include air quality conditions and emission control programs in NC. For more information about the kickoff and air quality in Buncombe County, contact the Land-of-Sky Regional Council at 828.251.6622 or info@landofsky.org.

A

I'm bill Laker with the land of sky Regional Council serve as the coordinator of the regional clean air campaign and also the land of sky clean vehicles coalition. Today we're having this press conference to get information out to the general public, but also community leaders and decision-makers about air quality issues like ground level, pollution, acid deposition, the haze that we have here in the summertime, but also solutions like conserving energy at home, working other locations and also driving less or driving low emissions, fuel-efficient vehicles. So that's what we were focusing on today.

A

We have seen very significant improvements in air quality in the last 15 years or so, and part of that is due to reductions from the power plants, but also we're seeing reductions from our fleet of vehicles, cars and trucks and buses fuels are getting cleaner. The engines are getting cleaner and then also we're working with fleets to help them transition over to alternative fuels like biodiesel or natural gas, or to plug-in electric hybrid vehicles that can reduce emissions even further and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

B

My name is Sheila Holman and the director of the division of air quality for North Carolina. um Here in Asheville today to kick off the ozone season. We will begin our forecasting for the ozone season on April first, and we will be letting the public know any days when there will be a code or injure or a Code Red day we forecast every day, but we obviously want to give the public information, so they can better protect their health.

B

Today, I was here to also talk about the status of air quality of North Carolina, and it's actually a very good news story. We are measuring compliance with all of the air quality standards all across the state and that's due in large part to a variety of actions, both with the federal level, the state level and the local level.

B

One of the key messages today is to remember what we can do as individuals to help improve air quality and making good choices about how we get to work and how we reduce our impact on the environment as well as how to protect our own health. On days when it's code orange.

C

I'm Ashley feather soon with Western North, Carolina, regional air quality agency. We are the local air quality program here in Buncombe County. We implement the state and federal and local air pollution regulations here in our area, thanks for being here for our ozone kickoff event.

C

This is something that we do every year at this time here in Western, North, Carolina and throughout the southeast, we're concerned about ground-level ozone pollution, and this is a pollutant- that's really a summertime issue, because in Oakland in order to create ozone, it's formed in the atmosphere with heat and sunlight reacts with nitrogen oxides and VOCs so every year about this time, the air quality forecast that you see on TV covers ozone starting on April first. So this is the beginning of our ozone forecasting season.

C

So we wanted to get the word out to everyone about ozone to let them know that this is an air quality concern of ours in the summertime so that they can be watching for those air quality forecasts.

C

D

I'm mil Jackson and I'm air resource specialist, with the u.s.

D

Forest Service and today at during the meeting, we learned a lot about how much air pollution has been reduced in our state and one of the questions that I asked is what does that mean in terms of visibility in terms of viewing our mountains, as well as the effects on our streams and bounce oils and with the reductions we've seen great improvements in terms of visibility, but Congress made it a goal in 1977 to have no man-made impairment to visibility and working with the North Carolina desert, air quality and other air quality agencies.

D

We are seeing reductions and improvements and visibility, and there will be additional reductions in the future too, when we reach that goal in 2064, but with those reductions, primarily in terms of sulfur dioxide emissions that are released from the burning of coal.

D

There will also be benefits to our forest soils in our streams, but we still have mountain streams that are being acidified by air pollution and it'll be a long time, perhaps a century in some areas. Less than that when those streams will recover. In terms of from the acidification, that's occurred in the past.

D