Special April 22 meeting on air pollution plan

A special joint meeting of the City Council and the Planning Commission will take place on Monday, April 22 beginning at 5 p.m. at the City Council chambers. This meeting is to receive an update on a plan for reducing air pollution in the community.

The City of Shafter and the south area of Fresno were chosen as the two pilot communities to test the bill and the process of deciding what cities can do to cut their pollution levels. A committee was formed in Shafter that is researching how and where to put up a monitoring station that will keep track of pollution levels on a regular basis. This data will be sent to the state to be analyzed to see if there had been any improvement in the air quality.

Monday’s meeting will include an update on the progress of the committee and outline what is being done to complete the master plan that will be submitted to the state board.

This bill would require the state board, by October 1, to prepare a monitoring plan regarding technologies for monitoring criteria air pollutants and toxic air contaminants and the need for and benefits of additional community air monitoring systems, as defined. The bill would require the state board to select, based on the monitoring plan, the highest priority locations in the state for the deployment of community air monitoring systems. The bill would require an air district containing a selected location, by July 1, 2019 -- which in this case is the City of Shafter -- to deploy a system in the selected location.

The bill would authorize the air district to require a stationary source that emits air pollutants in, or that materially affect, the selected location to deploy a fence-line monitoring system, as defined, or other specified real-time, on-site monitoring. The bill would authorize the state board, by Jan. 1, 2020, and annually thereafter, to select additional locations for the deployment of the systems. The bill would require air districts that have deployed a system to provide to the state board air quality data produced by the system.

By increasing the duties of air districts, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program and would require the state board to publish the data on its web site.