West Virginia is taking steps to improve air quality monitoring as newly proposed House bills would allow the state to install air quality monitors at the boundaries of pollution-emitting industrial facilities and in schools.
Environmental advocates are hopeful support for community-led monitoring will gain traction.
Morgan King, climate and energy program manager for the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, said the state has only a handful of regulatory air quality sensors where the public can get free and accessible data.
“Southern West Virginia has no regulatory air quality sensors,” King pointed out. “Community air monitors and community air quality sensors are ways to fill these gaps and help give more hyperlocal air quality data.”
According to the West Virginia Environmental Council, there are around a dozen ambient air quality stations monitored by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.
King hopes lawmakers will consider the strong public health impacts of air monitoring and continue to take actions to enable every household in the Mountain State to breathe cleaner air.
“Actually expand and encourage community air monitoring,” King urged. “Encourage our state to increase air monitoring throughout the region and make the data more transparent.”
This month, state lawmakers advanced Senate Bill 256, which gives the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection a stronger regulatory hold over emission standards for hazardous air pollutants and ambient air quality standards.
