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Contact: Christopher Dann, Public Information Officer
Air Pollution Control Division
(303) 692-3281
For Immediate Release Thursday, October 28, 2004
Cleaner School Buses Take to
Denver-Metro Area Roads;
Annual Wintertime High Pollution Season Kicks Into Gear on November 1
DENVER – School buses in the St. Vrain Valley School
District will deliver both students and improved air quality in North
Boulder County this winter, according to the Colorado Department of Public
Health and Environment.
An effort to significantly reduce emissions from school
buses coincides with the start of the Department of Public Health and
Environment’s annual wintertime High Pollution Advisory Program.
Meteorologists from the department's Air Pollution Control Division will
issue the first red or blue advisory of the 2004-2005 High Pollution
Advisory Program at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 31.
The first advisory takes effect at midnight on Nov. 1.
Subsequent advisories will be issued daily at 4 p.m. and remain in effect
for 24 hours. The five-month long season concludes on Thursday, March 31,
2005.
Red advisories, which indicate that air quality conditions
could lead to air pollution levels above federal and/or state standards,
trigger mandatory residential burning restrictions and voluntary driving
reductions. Burning is limited to approved fireplaces, wood stoves, pellet
stoves and masonry heaters in the seven-county Denver-metropolitan area.
Blue advisories require no public action. However,
residents are urged to consider using alternate modes of transportation
whenever possible during the 2004-2005 High Pollution Season.
In the St. Vrain Valley School District, dozens of buses
will be outfitted with oxidation catalysts to significantly reduce
emissions. The district also will install some anti-idling block heaters,
implement a biodiesel fuel program, and create driver and family education
and training programs as part of the approximately $150,000 project.
Program funding is provided by a supplemental environmental
project included in an agreement signed earlier this year between the
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and Cemex, Inc. over
air pollution violations at the company’s Lyons facility. Portions of
negotiated settlements in cases where environmental laws have been violated
often are targeted for funding supplemental environmental projects. The
intent is to benefit communities harmed by the violations. (More
on Cemex)
The St. Vrain Valley School District project is expected to
reduce harmful emissions by more than four tons per year. That includes an
11 percent reduction in carbon monoxide emissions and a 21 percent
reduction in volatile organic compound emissions from the retrofitted
buses.
The district also received funding from the Regional Air Quality Council as
part of its Clean Yellow Fleets for Blue Skies project, which will retrofit
between 850-1,250 school buses with pollution reduction technology and fund
the purchase of lower-polluting diesel fuel. The council’s project,
announced earlier this week, involves 16 school districts along Colorado’s
Front Range.
The Regional Air Quality Council also is a valuable partner in the
Department of Public Health and Environment’s wintertime High Pollution
Advisory Program, helping to inform residents and municipalities in the
seven-county Denver-metropolitan area about the current advisory.
The program area is defined as the seven
Denver-metropolitan area counties, including Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder,
Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson. The only exceptions are for
residences above 7,000 feet in elevation in parts of Boulder, Douglas and
Jefferson Counties, and residences east of Kiowa Creek in extreme eastern
parts of Adams and Arapahoe Counties.
Each red or blue advisory includes the current maximum air
pollution concentration and visibility readings in the metropolitan area,
as well as the highest readings for the day. Each advisory specifies which
pollutant is responsible for the day's current high and maximum high
readings, where those readings were recorded, and provides a pollution
outlook for the advisory period.
The most troublesome wintertime pollutants are carbon
monoxide and particulate matter.
Carbon monoxide emanates primarily from automobile exhaust
and is produced during the incomplete combustion of organic fuels. Carbon
monoxide affects the central nervous system by depriving the body of
oxygen. It can reduce a healthy person’s ability to perform tasks like
jogging or running. Sensitive persons like those with cardiovascular
disease, angina patients and pregnant women can be affected more
negatively.
Particulate matter refers to particles, regardless of
chemical composition, that are small enough to become airborne and
subsequently inhaled. They can become imbedded in a person’s respiratory
tract and lungs and cause respiratory damage. The smaller the particle, the
more deeply it can penetrate.
Most major Denver-metropolitan area media outlets include
each day’s advisory in some form in weather segments, on weather pages, in
news briefs, as part of traffic reports, or in daily calendars and/or
digests. The Air Pollution Control Division also maintains two telephone
hotlines, 303-758-4848 and 303-782-0211, to provide the public with air
quality information. The hotlines are updated with newly recorded messages
daily.
Additionally, Internet users can log onto
http://apcd.state.co.us/psi/advisory.html any time for the current
advisory and current air pollution conditions recorded at any of several
monitors located throughout the metropolitan area. Data is updated
automatically each hour, 365 days a year.
Internet users also can select options that will display
bar and line graphs for specific air pollutants to investigate daily and
day-to-day trends at a given site, and reports that compare air pollution
levels site-to-site. Information is archived.
A wide variety of web pages commonly accessed by Internet
users have linked their pages to the current on-line advisory information.
Instructions on how to link a website to the on-line advisory information
are available at
http://apcd.state.co.us/psi/banners.html, or add the following
code to your page:
<a href="http://apcd.state.co.us/psi/advisory.phtml">
<img src=http://apcd.state.co.us/psi/adv.gif alt="Click for AQI advisory"
border=0></a>
Last winter, 91 blue and 61 red advisories were issued
during the five-month season. One advisory period was split, meaning red
until midnight and blue thereafter. The previous winter, 100 blue and 52
red advisories were issued. Typically, the breakdown for an entire season
is about two-thirds blue, one-third red.
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