As part of its plan to help Franklin County meet the national ambient air quality standard, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has made real time air quality readings available through several sources, one official said Wednesday.

“The area was designated as a nonattainment area in 2009,” said Melissa Gibbs, airshed coordinator for the DEQ’s Pocatello Regional Office. “Because it does not meet the 24-hour ambient air quality standard, the governor is tasked with putting together a plan to bring the area back into attainment.”

Of course, Gibbs points out, that means coming up with that plan falls on the shoulders of those at the DEQ as the agency responsibility for environmental quality in Idaho. That plan is in the process of being developed, a completion for which is required by the end of 2012.

But the air quality issue in Franklin County comes with some variables not typically found in most issues of environmental quality. The air quality issue runs throughout the Cache Valley, which includes parts of Franklin County and runs into Utah, down to the Logan area. Further complicating matters is the fact that Utah and Idaho fall into two different regions of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Officially it’s the Logan, Utah-ID Nonattainment Area, but DEQ is typically referring to it as the Cache Valley. Because the nonattainment area includes part of Utah, those at the DEQ are coordinating with that state.

At the center of the air quality issue, Gibbs says, is a pattern not unfamiliar to those in the Portneuf Valley.

“They experience a lot of inversions,” Gibbs said. “The nonattainment area includes the cities of Franklin, Dayton, Preston, Weston, Clifton and Oxford.”

Each of those towns has adopted a city ordinance regarding residential wood combustion, or laws governing when residents can use their wood-burning stoves and fireplaces.

“Those ordinances limit folks burning wood in a stove or fireplace on days when we reach 25.4 micrograms per meter cubed,” Gibbs said, referring to the level of particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers in size.

To help gauge what those levels are, the DEQ installed a real time air quality monitor in Franklin in late 2010, putting it into full operation in early 2011.

The wood combustion ordinances, which went into affect this year in those six Franklin County towns, are about to become something citizens of those towns will need to worry about as winter, between November and February, is the most common time those inversions occur.

Those living in Franklin County have several options to monitor that real-time air quality data. There is a 24-hour hotline, at 208-239-5028, which is updated each morning.

That information can also be e-mailed to those interested in having it. To get that information e-mailed to you, go to the Daily Air Quality Reports and Forecasts page on DEQ’s website, at www.deq.idaho.gov/air-quality/monitoring, and clicking the link for those reports. Once on that page, click the “Subscribe to this page” link at the top of the page. 

Folks can also access that data in real time — its updated hourly — by going to that same page above and clicking the link for the “Real Time Air Monitoring” page. Once on the air monitoring page, click the “Get Access to Data” drop down box on the left rail.

Gibbs said the data from that real-time monitoring of air quality will be passed on to city and county officials to help gauge when their residents shouldn’t be burning wood.