Environmental Leaders

0:00
hi good afternoon president ramirez and
0:01
fellow board members i appreciate uh
0:04
having a little of your time this
0:05
afternoon to share with all of you
0:08
essentially the first seven months of
0:11
data
0:12
that is being collected at the wonderful
0:16
sorry i’m just pulling up the slideshow
0:17
as we speak um air monitors
0:20
that the board approved a little bit
0:21
more than a year ago about a year and a
0:23
half ago
0:24
um i will keep brief we are talking
0:27
about air quality so it gets really
0:29
technical and down in the weeds at times
0:31
but i’m going to attempt to float above
0:33
all that and give you guys really the
0:35
kind of
0:36
meat of the what we’re seeing and the
0:38
the sort of science we’re looking at
0:41
so as the commissioners will remember we
0:44
have
0:45
uh placed these monitors on the roof
0:48
at haycock’s elementary which is down on
0:50
perkins
0:51
many of you are familiar with that
0:53
location there
0:55
and uh is adjacent to uh
0:58
wineme road as our corridor there and
1:00
then
1:01
in a large residential area typical of
1:03
south oxnard
1:04
a little more than a mile to pretty much
1:07
due east
1:07
of the port this was selected because of
1:11
its
1:12
kind of representation of the broader
1:13
community and then the proximity
1:15
to the port we began monitoring back in
1:18
december of last year so in a few months
1:20
we will be coming up on a full year’s
1:22
worth of data
1:24
now what does this stuff look like well
1:26
you you will remember
1:27
when we had the the sort of unveiling
1:29
ceremony
1:30
uh we had some of the equipment out on
1:32
the table for the community to see
1:34
this is what it physically looks like in
1:36
location on the roof there
1:38
we purposefully uh positioned it in a
1:41
place where it would be
1:43
and um less visible from from the road
1:45
there
1:46
and what we’re actually monitoring for
1:48
is essentially two things we’re
1:50
measuring for
1:51
tiny tiny air particles called
1:53
particulate matter
1:54
of different sizes and then we’re also
1:57
measuring stuff around kind of what the
1:59
atmosphere is doing what is the
2:01
temperature
2:02
what is the wind what is the direction
2:03
the wind is coming from
2:05
so you can see the the the one on the
2:07
right that looks sort of like a mini
2:09
fridge
2:10
that is the enclosure that contains the
2:12
the expensive
2:13
high accuracy monitors and then the the
2:16
tp
2:17
or excuse me tree looking thing on the
2:19
left is our sort of
2:22
atmospheric measurements and the little
2:24
small mobile monitors
2:26
so those two work together to give us
2:28
our information
2:30
so you will remember from that unveiling
2:32
this piece of equipment was available
2:34
for the public to see and sort of look
2:37
at and ask questions about
2:38
this is our reference grade
2:41
particulate monitor and the reason that
2:44
reference grade piece is important
2:46
is because there’s a full range of air
2:49
monitoring equipment
2:50
from the inexpensive small mobile types
2:54
of monitors
2:55
all the way up to the other end of the
2:57
spectrum which is this monitor
2:59
and so this monitor gives us information
3:02
data around the air quality that is the
3:05
same
3:06
quality as that which a group like the
3:09
environmental protection agency
3:11
the air resources board the air district
3:14
would use the same type of data so it is
3:16
the very highest quality
3:18
data available so it is really kind of
3:20
the standard if if
3:22
one were to ask what is air quality like
3:24
in ventura county
3:26
a monitor like this would be where they
3:27
would get their answer so this piece of
3:30
machinery here is measuring
3:31
three different sizes of that
3:33
particulate matter
3:34
including humidity and humidity is
3:37
really important because of course
3:39
humidity is just a measurement of
3:40
moisture in the air but
3:42
those moisture pieces those little bits
3:44
of water right
3:46
are are acting like little sponges so
3:48
they’re grabbing pieces of dust or other
3:50
particulate out of the atmosphere all
3:52
the time
3:53
so the more water you have the more
3:55
difficult it can be to get a really
3:57
accurate measurement
3:58
so that’s an important measurement there
4:00
the other one
4:02
that’s similarly uh accurate
4:05
and of high quality is this one called
4:08
an athlometer
4:09
kind of a fancy word for saying that
4:11
this is a machine that does nothing
4:14
but measure very very tiny particles
4:17
called black carbon and the reason that
4:20
we’re doing that is important because
4:23
communities environmental justice
4:26
public health advocates etc have become
4:29
very very
4:30
focused in on something called diesel
4:32
particulate matter
4:34
and diesel particulate matter is
4:35
essentially
4:37
a combination of byproducts that are
4:40
left over
4:41
from the combustion of diesel fuels and
4:44
it’s diesel it’s fuels that are similar
4:46
to diesel so gasolines and distillates
4:49
and
4:50
bunker fuel and a whole bunch of stuff
4:52
they put out a
4:53
kind of a variety of of air pollution
4:57
that includes gases and particles and
5:00
diesel particulate matter
5:01
in and of itself is very very difficult
5:04
to monitor for
5:06
because of that sort of mix of all the
5:07
different things in it
5:09
so black carbon is the surrogate that is
5:12
used
5:12
in place of diesel particulate matter so
5:15
we test for black carbon to
5:17
understand what the diesel particulate
5:19
matter that’s out there would actually
5:21
look like
5:22
and this is widely done and this is a
5:24
means of understanding what that dpm
5:27
which is the acronym for diesel
5:28
particulate matter looks like
5:30
and then the other really important
5:32
piece to this is that black carbon
5:34
doesn’t just come
5:35
from burning diesel fuel it also comes
5:38
from burning
5:39
other organic substances wood
5:42
in particular so anytime people are
5:45
having a fire at home in their fireplace
5:48
anytime there is a brush fire or forest
5:51
fire
5:52
this machine can allow us to
5:54
differentiate between which
5:56
is which when is it brush fire smoke
5:59
and when is it diesel smoke so that’s a
6:01
really important thing we’ll talk about
6:03
a little bit more
6:05
we put up a series of these little small
6:07
handheld meters
6:08
um these are less accurate of course uh
6:11
and what we’re trying to do with these
6:13
is create a relationship between the
6:15
little ones
6:16
and the big fancy one so that we can be
6:19
able to use these little ones
6:20
in other locations take them down put
6:23
them at the port
6:24
you know put them at a community
6:25
location and understand what the
6:28
readings should actually look like based
6:29
on that
6:31
so what particular matter why black
6:34
carbon
6:35
well of course so particulate matter 10
6:37
that’s the biggest number it’s the
6:39
biggest size
6:40
it’s things like dust right if you were
6:43
to be walking on a dirt field the dust
6:45
that would get kicked up
6:46
that is pm10 that would get stuck in
6:48
your nose stuck in your mouth
6:50
pm 2.5 much smaller four times smaller
6:54
that stuff is goes through your mouth
6:57
and through down into your lungs
6:59
and can get into your basically into
7:01
your lungs
7:02
pm1 which is again half as small
7:06
and more than 2.5 these are tiny tiny
7:09
particles
7:10
and these can go into the bloodstream
7:13
and can
7:13
travel all around the body and can get
7:16
into
7:17
different organs and cause different
7:18
negative health outcomes
7:20
so that’s why that that fine grain stuff
7:22
that that really small particle stuff is
7:24
really
7:25
getting a tremendous amount of attention
7:27
from the state in particular the
7:29
california air resources board is
7:31
very focused on uh on pm and dpm right
7:34
now
7:35
so where does this stuff come from where
7:37
does the black carbon that we’re
7:38
measuring
7:39
the diesel particulate matter that we’re
7:41
measuring where is this coming from
7:43
well it comes from a couple different
7:45
sources on-road stuff so all the trucks
7:48
buses cars trash trucks vans
7:51
everything out there off-road stuff so
7:55
our ocean-going vessels the ships
7:57
construction equipment
7:59
cargo handling equipment trains um
8:02
agricultural equipment whether it’s a
8:04
tractor or groundwater pump
8:06
but then again of course we’ve got that
8:08
other piece that is that
8:09
biomass that is that plants you know
8:13
wood that people are burning and those
8:15
wildfire pieces
8:16
so that’s that sort of mix of
8:18
combination of stuff typically
8:20
that sort of brush fiery wood stove
8:23
stuff is less than 20 percent but that
8:25
can change
8:26
and and we’ll see that so wildfire
8:30
wildfire as you guys know is one of
8:33
the most visible signs of our changing
8:36
climate
8:37
and is one of the most readily um
8:40
obvious sort of sources of bad air
8:43
quality
8:44
we all know we’ve all seen and breathed
8:46
in the last two months
8:48
smoke from fires that can be hundreds of
8:51
miles away from us
8:53
you know sort of lending to this how
8:55
fluid air
8:56
is air moves all over the globe
8:59
that smoke that came from california
9:01
wildfires is being measured
9:03
in europe parts of asia now it
9:05
circumnavigates the entire world
9:08
so why is wood smoke bad why do we care
9:10
about this well because
9:12
when there are wildfires nearby those
9:16
average concentrations can increase by
9:19
20 times or more those really
9:22
high high peak levels can go up by more
9:25
than a hundred times from wood smoke
9:28
so it’s very important to us that we
9:30
understand
9:32
when there is wood smoke where is it
9:34
coming from
9:35
is it wood smoke those sorts of
9:36
questions because what we’re trying to
9:38
do is help to understand
9:40
when there’s bad air quality in the
9:42
oxnard plane
9:44
where is that pollution coming from
9:47
so let’s cut to the chase what are we
9:49
talking about what are the numbers
9:50
here we have our first seven months of
9:53
data
9:54
december through august and this is
9:56
black carbon again
9:58
and the units that we’re talking about
10:00
here are
10:02
of course um micrograms so that is a
10:06
thousandth of one gram
10:09
if you were to take that and put it into
10:11
a big box a meter cube
10:14
if you were to drop a thousandth of a
10:16
gram into that box
10:18
of air that would be a microgram so what
10:20
we’re seeing
10:22
is january december february those cold
10:25
weather months
10:26
are our worst air quality months
10:29
and then our numbers have gotten
10:31
sequentially better all the way until
10:33
august and then in august because of the
10:36
fires
10:36
those numbers went back up again and
10:39
we’ll get into some more detail as to
10:40
why this is but this generally is
10:42
showing us
10:43
that air quality is very good and it’s
10:46
very consistent and that’s really
10:48
important that consistency is important
10:51
because
10:52
bad health outcomes come from long-term
10:56
exposure
10:56
to bad air so if we have long-term
10:59
consistent numbers showing good
11:01
air we can say that overall
11:04
air quality in the oxnard area is very
11:06
very good
11:08
so this is just another diagram showing
11:10
you those first three months december
11:12
january february see how that bar is
11:15
almost twice as high
11:16
as all the subsequent months so that’s
11:20
showing
11:20
we have bad air when it’s cold and
11:23
better air as it starts to warm up
11:26
why is that giles did you go back to
11:29
that slide before
11:32
if yeah if i was going to try to shoot
11:34
bullet holes in it
11:35
i would go well in march we got shut
11:38
down
11:38
you know with kobet everybody stayed off
11:40
the road so how does that impact this
11:42
data
11:43
absolutely that’s a great question
11:44
commissioner rooney i appreciate that
11:46
i will show you the answer to your
11:47
question in just a second because we
11:49
actually have the data
11:51
showing when there are ships present and
11:52
when there are not ships present
11:54
and showing our numbers of ships from
11:57
last year as a comparison against this
11:59
year
12:00
so let me just jump into that in just
12:02
one moment i just wanted to display kind
12:04
of the why this stuff is bad in the
12:06
winter
12:07
and the reason it is bad in the winter
12:09
is really because of atmospheric science
12:12
wonderful complexities of
12:15
air and temperature right when air gets
12:17
hot it gets bigger it’s why a hot air
12:19
balloon rises up
12:20
or when you have a fireplace and all the
12:22
heat goes up to the ceiling
12:24
that cold dense air sinks to the ground
12:27
to the bottom
12:28
so in the winter everywhere oxnard
12:31
ohio etc we get a very cold
12:34
layer of air that gets squashed by a
12:37
very
12:38
thin layer of warm air with heavy cold
12:41
air sitting on top of it it’s kind of
12:42
like a cake
12:44
and so the same amount of pollution is
12:46
getting made all the time
12:48
that source the source of pollution the
12:50
cars the buses
12:51
they’re all just driving doing their
12:53
thing but the amount of
12:55
air in which all that pollution is
12:58
sitting
12:59
gets squashed in those cold months by
13:01
more than half
13:03
so you have half as much space for the
13:06
same amount of pollution
13:07
so it gets twice as bad that’s really
13:10
what’s driving that
13:11
so we’re going to do a quick comparison
13:13
against la long beach
13:15
and winemi the purple line you can see
13:18
here that’s
13:18
la long beach numbers the lower darker
13:21
line
13:22
that’s our haycox monitor so the message
13:25
here
13:25
is that we’re basically the air quality
13:27
is about twice as good
13:29
consistently across same thing here this
13:32
is
13:33
without any fire data included there so
13:35
same thing about twice as good as those
13:37
la numbers
13:38
so now commissioner rooney to answer
13:40
your question
13:42
how do we know it’s not a covid related
13:44
artifact that we see these decreases
13:46
here is december we’re going to look at
13:48
ships and port and no ships in port what
13:50
we’re looking at here is
13:51
each of these dots is a one hour
13:54
average each image left and right
13:58
has 720 dots on it
14:01
if you see blue blue means good air
14:04
if you see red red means bad air and
14:07
where the dot
14:08
is on the map tells you
14:11
where that wind was blowing to blow that
14:15
that air into the monitor so as you can
14:18
see
14:20
the bad air that we see in december
14:23
when there’s ships at the dock is coming
14:25
from the north
14:27
it’s not coming from the west where the
14:29
port is located
14:30
when there’s no ships you see the same
14:32
thing you see
14:34
bad air coming from the north and from
14:36
the northeast a little bit as well
14:38
but predominantly even in the bad air
14:41
times
14:42
you see good air lots and lots and lots
14:45
of good readings
14:47
same thing in january chips no ships
14:50
same thing same thing in february
14:53
another cold month
14:55
lots of clean dots in the center these
14:57
bad
14:58
dots if we want to call them that these
15:00
are all taking place
15:02
at two and three in the morning when the
15:05
air is the very coldest
15:06
when that layer of air is squished to
15:09
its very thinnest
15:10
if you want to breathe the worst air in
15:14
the entire year go outside at three in
15:17
the morning
15:18
three in the morning on christmas
15:19
morning santa claus gets it because
15:23
everybody’s having a fire and
15:25
everybody’s you know got their
15:26
fireplaces going
15:27
and that mo that cold air again
15:29
squishing
15:30
february we see it march same thing now
15:33
march is interesting
15:34
because as you guys know having been
15:36
around the port for a long time in the
15:38
spring
15:38
that air that wind starts to shift from
15:41
being gentle
15:42
to blowing out of the west so see this
15:45
little
15:46
clump of what looks like feathers right
15:47
in the middle
15:49
that’s a like a wind rose that’s showing
15:51
us wind direction
15:53
and the more colorful and the longer
15:55
they kind of look like turkey feathers
15:57
the longer they are that means the more
15:59
wind so here we start to see
16:01
look at that this is april we see long
16:03
turkey feathers from the west
16:05
that means air blowing in from the west
16:08
again
16:09
lots and lots of good air a little bit
16:12
from the west but those readings again
16:13
were
16:14
very late at night that’s essentially
16:17
the story here
16:19
is really that air in oxnard is really
16:22
really fluid
16:24
um it’s really about
16:27
consistent numbers good quality air
16:31
numbers that we’re seeing there
16:32
there’s lots more data i could show we
16:34
can really sink our teeth into this if
16:36
you guys are interested
16:37
but i wanted to give you kind of that
16:38
high level and the the takeaways are
16:41
essentially that we have consistently
16:43
very good quality air the worst air that
16:46
anybody breathes in oxnard is really
16:50
being driven by long-term seasonal
16:53
changes
16:54
in the temperature and wind regime for
16:56
the area
16:58
that there isn’t a distinct signature
17:01
of port pollution discernible in this
17:04
monitoring data
17:06
and that’s important because it says
17:08
that as we had hoped
17:11
air quality is consistent it’s fluid and
17:14
it’s good quality