By Anish Abraham

Joburg ciy's plans to deal with air quality management are so good it has received the Local Authority Award from the National Association for Clean Air for its efforts.

The award was made at a gala dinner during the association's annual conference in Cape Town. Association members include academics, government officials from local, provincial and national government, environmental and air quality consultants, industry representatives and ordinary citizens.

Criteria for the Local Authority Award included the development of an air quality management plan that dealt with issues within certain jurisdictions; the appointment of dedicated air pollution control officers committed to implementing the plan; an air quality monitoring system; and displaying leadership beyond the legal requirements.

Johannesburg City council adopted an air quality management plan in 2003, before the promulgation of the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act. In terms of the act (Act 39 of 2004), local authorities are responsible for developing air quality management plans, ambient air quality monitoring, identifying priority pollutants, establishing local emission standards, appointing air quality officers and performing emission licensing authority functions.

Margot Barenbrug, the senior atmospheric scientist in the City's department of development planning, transportation and environment, accepted the award on behalf of the air quality monitoring and compliance unit.

"Implementation of the Air Quality Management Plan is well under way. The City has adopted a set of air quality guidelines for the priority pollutants, a network of air quality monitoring stations is operational at key locations within the City and we are currently populating our emissions inventory," Barenbrug says.

The previous legislation only dealt with pollution coming directly out of factory smoke stacks and did not consider the cumulative effect of air pollution through the monitoring of ambient air quality, which was its main failing point.

Joburg's Air Quality Management Plan sets out how the City must deal with air pollution and polluters. It aims to achieve acceptable air quality levels throughout the city, promote a clean and healthy environment for residents, minimise the negative effects of air pollution and promote the reduction of greenhouse gases. The air quality guidelines adopted by Johannesburg are based on those of the European Union and World Health Organisation.

All metros and local municipalities are required to have an air quality management plan. If they do not have the capacity to establish one, the district municipality can do it.

Stations
There are six ambient air quality monitoring stations in Joburg under the department of environmental planning and management, and two under environmental health, with each station costing up to R1-million.

There is a primary station next to the Buccleuch interchange in northern Johannesburg to monitor traffic emissions, one in Newtown to measure pollution in the inner city, one in Jabavu and one in Orange Farm to measure air quality in townships and one in Delta Park.

The sixth station is based in Alexandra and was commissioned as part of the Alexandra Renewal Project.

"The maintenance and ongoing calibration of the instruments and the data management from the stations has been outsourced so that results are independently verified. This ensures that the integrity of Joburg's data is maintained and remains credible," Barenbrug explains.

Data is quality assured and uploaded on to the internet in a user friendly form, such as downloadable graphs and tables, by Gondwana Environmental Services. Members of the air quality unit have access to the site, but in future air quality results will also be readily available to the public.

The unit uses these results to make quarterly presentations to all relevant Section 80 committees in the City council. These committees include community services, environmental health and planning.

The biggest sources of pollution in Johannesburg are burning fossil fuels in the townships and the growing number of vehicles on its roads.

"In the case of townships, emissions from domestic fuel burning for cooking and space heating are released directly into the residents' breathing zone and not only into the ambient air. This is a huge concern for us," Barenbrug adds.

Regulations for managing air quality are still to be finalised at national level and the unit thinks it is best to wait for these to be concluded before the City starts to revise its by-laws and develop new ones.

The Air Quality Management Plan recommends a total of 11 air quality monitoring stations around the city. It hopes to use the data collected from the six existing stations to demonstrate their importance and the need for more stations.

A major challenge is the capacity vacuum in the field of air quality management. Barenbrug says there is a need for tertiary institutions to offer more courses dealing with managing the environment, and specifically with managing air quality.

In addition, the City has bought an advanced atmospheric dispersion model called ADMS Urban. This allows planners to simulate the effects of certain sources of pollution on ground-level concentrations as a result of its dispersion associated with prevailing meteorological conditions.

"It is a very good tool from a planning perspective. We bought the model about a year ago and are currently populating the emissions inventory," Barenbrug says.

Implementation
Joburg is making great strides in ensuring it plays its part in controlling emissions. Already the City is working towards energy efficient lighting in all its buildings. Apart from saving on its electricity bill, the less energy used, the less pollution from the power stations.

The department of environmental health has a programme for testing diesel vehicles for excessive emissions, implemented by environmental health officers in each of Joburg's 11 regions. Hartridge meters are used to measure levels of various pollutants from diesel vehicles' exhaust emissions.

As part of the new act, local government is also responsible for conducting education and awareness campaigns on the effects of air pollution, particularly on human and environmental health, on how to become more energy efficient and how to reduce emissions.

This includes persuading residents who burn fossil fuels to turn to liquid petroleum gas, electricity or other alternatives.

According to data that has been collected, about 48 percent of particulate pollution in Johannesburg comes from fossil fuels being burned in the home, 20 percent from vehicle exhaust emissions, 22 percent from scheduled processes (industrial processes) and about 10 percent from fugitive dust from mine dumps.

"Unlike a lot of other places which can target large industries to reduce their air pollution, we have to persuade people to change their behaviour and current practices and that presents a significant challenge to us," Barenbrug concludes.

Source: Johannesburg News Agency