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E-mail StoryAir district, critics clash over data
| Tuesday, Apr 25 2006 10:05 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Apr 25 2006 10:09 PM
In a development hailed by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District as "historic," this week the pollution-plagued agency asked state regulators to recognize it for an air-quality achievement.
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The district hasn't violated the national standard for PM10 -- or particulate matter less than 10 microns in diameter -- since 2002, according to the agency. Environmentalists dispute this calculation, but the district says it deserves to be reclassified from serious nonattainment to attainment because it's gone three years without a PM10 violation.
"This is huge," said Seyed Sadredin, executive director of the air district. "(Oil companies and other industrial operations) have spent hundreds of millions of dollars. They need to see the return on their investment as we go around and ask them to do more."
The celebration is premature, according to environmentalists.
The district has two monitoring systems -- filters that gather particles to be analyzed at a lab, and a set that measures air quality in real time.
The district is using the filter monitors to show its clean record, while environmentalists say the real-time monitors should be included in the assessment. Excluding them leaves out an important part of the air quality story, environmentalists said.
"All of that data needs to be considered," said Paul Cort, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental group based in the Bay Area. "Trying to weasel out by cherry-picking monitoring data is just not a sensible approach."
Real-time monitoring isn't meant to be an official record, Sadredin said. It's used as a tool for forecasting, but can be off by as much as 70 percent, he said.
The state Air Resources Board will review the data and make a recommendation to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.