Canfor Pulp Products Inc. unveiled Tuesday an air pollution monitoring program meant to test expected improvements in air quality from more than $150 million in upgrades at two of its pulp mills in Prince George.
The $250,00 monitoring program at two new stations -- at Exploration Place in Fort George Park and on Foreman Road -- is directed mainly at tracking expected reductions in odour emissions which are captured as total reduced sulphur measurements.
The odour from sulphur emissions from pulp mills is one of the leading air quality concerns in Prince George.
The equipment and monitoring is being supplied by FP Innovations, a Canada-wide government-industry research agency. The monitoring stations have already been operated to capture baseline data, which can be viewed online at www.bcairquality.com/readings/index.html.
"We feel it's important to validate our stated reductions," said Robert Dufresne, general manager of Canfor Pulp's Northwood plant.
Modelling has estimated that environmental upgrades at the P.G. Pulp and Paper mill will reduce odour events and intensity by 60 per cent in the city's airshed. The improvements at the P.G. Pulp and Paper mill are scheduled to be complete by April.
Improvements at the Northwood mill, scheduled for completion in the fall of this year, will further reduce odour emissions.
The stations will also measure fine particulate air emissions.
Upgrades to reduce fine particulate emissions are taking place at both Northwood and at Prince George Pulp and Paper. The impact of these upgrades is expected to be much smaller on the airshed than the odour reduction projects.
That's because research, carried out under the Prince George Air Improvement Roundtable, has shown that all of Canfor Pulp's emissions are responsible for 10 per cent of fine particulate levels in the airshed.
The improvements at the two pulp mills -- which includes installing high-tech electro-static precipitators -- are forecast to reduce Prince George levels by one per cent.
Prince George Air Improvement Roundtable president Terry Roberts said the monitoring program takes the air improvement effort one step further, noting it was research that helped determine which projects Canfor Pulp would invest in.
The improvement roundtable includes representatives from the province, city, Northern Health, UNBC, the public and industry.
"So, it's really an exciting time. This is a really good example of linking research to operational activities," said Roberts.
Much of the funding for Canfor Pulp's environmental upgrades have come from a $1-billion federal green subsidy program meant to offset a subsidy program in the United States.
Canfor has secured $122 million from the Canadian program, adding another $37 million of its own money to the projects.
Exploration Place will post information boards at the monitoring station at its site to explain the project.
