Planning
Introduction
The Skeena Region Air Program has been assessing a variety of air quality issues for many years. It has developed management and prevention strategies in the form of "airshed management plans" since 1992. Recent initiatives also include smoke-management planning, and education-and-compliance promotion. Useful tools for understanding the inputs of various pollutants to an airshed include permits, approvals and emission inventories. Reports has electronic copies of publications from the Skeena Region Air Program.
Airshed Management Planning
An airshed is an area where the ambient (outdoor, surrounding) air quality is
influenced by similar sources, meteorology and terrain features. This area may
contain a single community or it could contain multiple communities — air and air pollution know no political boundaries. In an area such as the Bulkley Valley-Lakes District in Skeena Region, where many communities fall into the same airshed, it is more efficient and effective to address the issues and communities collectively.
In Skeena Region, numerous airshed (or "air quality") management plans have been developed. The first plan was completed in 1992 and focused on managing air quality in Smithers. It was later revised and expanded in 1995 and again in 1999.
These revisions were directed at reducing impacts from particulate matter in the
Bulkley Valley as a whole, an expansion that encompassed more of the airshed as
opposed to a single community.
A new airshed management plan called the Community Action Plan for Clean Air,
developed through a community and consensus based process between Fall 2002 and
Spring 2004, is now complete and has moved into the implementation phase. This
plan encompasses the entire airshed, from Endako in the east to Kitwanga in the
west, and aims to reduce impacts of fine particulate emissions from all sources
using local knowledge and science. The plan includes goals, indicators and
strategies for the airshed as a whole, as well as for specific sources. The
seven main source categories the plan currently addresses include beehive
burners; other regulated industrial sources; forest harvest debris burning;
agriculture, land development and small sawmill debris burning; residential and
commercial space heating; backyard burning; and road dust. For more information
on this plan, and to get a copy of it, please go to the Bulkley Valley-Lakes District Airshed Management Society website.
Smoke Management Planning
The Skeena-Stikine Forest District and the Nadina Forest District both fall within
the boundaries of Skeena Region, and more specifically the Bulkley Valley-Lakes
District Airshed. Both forest districts have burn plans approved by Forest
District Managers, that work to reduce smoke impacts from open burning. The Bulkley Timber Supply Area Burn Plan for Smoke Management and the Nadina Forest District Burn Management Plan are available here or by calling the District Ministry of Forest offices, or Ministry of Environment in Smithers.
updated: may 2006
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