San Diego County officials are getting a much more robust pollution tracking system, thanks to a new state grant.
San Diego County officials hope to have a much better picture of the region’s air pollution problems soon.
That’s because the California Air Resources Board is paying for 15 new movable air pollution monitors that can help pinpoint problems.
The $2.5 million grant comes from the state’s cap and trade program which sells carbon credits to polluters.
San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said all of the county’s residents deserve clean air.
“If we can monitor it, we can better address it, but the monitoring alone will not improve the air quality,” said Fletcher. “It’s the data we get from monitoring that will hold us accountable for actions we take to actually improve air quality.”
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Disadvantaged communities suffer the most.
A child born in Barrio Logan is eight times more likely to develop asthma than a child born in La Jolla, according to Fletcher.
The state grant also pays for two cars to drive the counties main roads with a mobile air monitor. The air is sampled, recorded and uploaded where it can be put together.
The Air Pollution Control District’s Robert Kard says two mobile monitors will also drive local roads for a month.
“They’re driving every road 20 times, within this area, 12 census tracts and giving us a picture of pollution for particulate matter, for gasses," said Robert Kard of the Air Pollution Control District of the County of San Diego. “And so with that, we’ll look at their data on a 3D visual graph and we’ll be able to say we need to pinpoint something here. Let’s put our permanent samplers here.”
