Flaring at Fort Saskatchewan

Air pollution courtesy of DOW HCP

March 30, 2007, one of the Fort Saskatchewan refineries (DOW HCP - Hydrocarbon Project) flared off gases that for quite a few hours injected a massive amount of gases and soot into the air.  Keep in mind that the soot is just the visible part of what was put into the air.

The incident was not mentioned in the newspapers, perhaps because the emissions were being blown towards Bruderheim and Lamont rather than towards Fort Saskatchewan, most likely because it is quite common.  Is it possible that the time of the emission was picked according to whether the wind was blowing into the right direction? Let's hope not.

The source of the emissions, the flare stack at DOW HCP, is located at the extreme left of the photo shown above.  The eastern end of Bruderheim is located at the extreme right of the photo.  The composite photo was taken from just south of the junction of Highways 15 and 45.  The trail of smoke visible in the photo is about 15 km long.

The next photo shows a close-up view of the culprit, the flare stack at DOW HCP.

The vehicles at the left of the photo are 1.6 km away, and the flare stack at DOW HCP is 14.5 km away.

We had to drive to Fort Saskatchewan that evening.  The next photo was taken from the intersection of Highway 15 and RR 214, at 17:52 hrs.

The next photo was taken from the same location and shows a view towards Bruderheim.  It appears that the emissions and smoke from the DOW HCP flare stack were by this time well on the way towards Lamont.

At 21:29 hrs we were on our way home after the function we had attended.  The excessive flaring at DOW HCP was still going, and at this time the wind was blowing towards the North.  The next photo was taken at the intersection of Highway 15 and RR 221 (89th Ave and 125th St). 

The DOW HCP flare stack (the orange ball of fire) is roughly 2.25 km away from the location from where the photo was taken.  Thanks to Rosalie Bartz for the photo.  The photo was taken at about 21:30 that night.

Update 2007 04 19: It appears that none of the air-quality data collected by the Fort Air Partnership (FAP) monitoring stations picked up anything out of the ordinary on March 30th.  I examined the FAP data records for Mar.  30, 2007 in great detail, to make sure nothing was overlooked.  There is nothing in those details that indicates anything exceptionally bad in any of the FAP records available at http://www.telusgeomatics.com.
   However, there is something very curious in those records for Apr. 18-19, 2007.

Around noon on Apr. 19th, 2007 I downloaded air-quality data for the Elk Island monitoring station (at Astotin Lake in Elk Island Park).  At 17:30 hrs I repeated the download and was surprised to find differences in values for a specific interval.  Greatly excessive air quality index values ranging from 57 to 197 had by the time of downloading the second data set been deleted at the source.  The upper limit for "good" air quality is 25, the range for "fair" is 26 - 50, for "poor" air quality it is 51 - 100, and the lower end for "very poor" is 101.  The data I downloaded are as follows:

		Time downloaded
		Noon	17:30
Station	Date	AQI (no units)	AQI (no units)
Elk Island	4 PM Apr 18/07	22	22
Elk Island	5 PM Apr 18/07	23	23
Elk Island	6 PM Apr 18/07	22	22
Elk Island	7 PM Apr 18/07	22	22
Elk Island	8 PM Apr 18/07	n/a	n/a
Elk Island	9 PM Apr 18/07	197	n/a
Elk Island	10 PM Apr 18/07	104	n/a
Elk Island	11 PM Apr 18/07	125	n/a
Elk Island	12 AM Apr 19/07	155	n/a
Elk Island	1 AM Apr 19/07	124	n/a
Elk Island	2 AM Apr 19/07	162	n/a
Elk Island	3 AM Apr 19/07	57	n/a
Elk Island	4 AM Apr 19/07	150	n/a
Elk Island	5 AM Apr 19/07	137	n/a
Elk Island	6 AM Apr 19/07	105	n/a
Elk Island	7 AM Apr 19/07	122	n/a
Elk Island	8 AM Apr 19/07	110	n/a
Elk Island	9 AM Apr 19/07	66	n/a
Elk Island	10 AM Apr 19/07	16	16
Elk Island	11 AM Apr 19/07	15	15
Elk Island	12 PM Apr 19/07		15
Elk Island	1 PM Apr 19/07		12
Elk Island	2 PM Apr 19/07		13
Elk Island	3 PM Apr 19/07		13
Elk Island	4 PM Apr 19/07		12

No explanation for the changes affecting the interval from 9 PM Apr 18/07 to 9 AM Apr 19/07 was given.  There was not even any indication that the data had been fiddled with.  Is that standard operating procedure for the Fort Air Partnership?  How many times have such data adjustments been made over the years?  How did it come about that so many of the data sets for various monitoring stations have gaps?

It is very unprofessional and not permissible to change raw data discovered through measuring, but it is permissible to exclude specific instances of raw data from second-stage representations produced from raw data, provided that reasons are provided along with every second-stage representation for such exclusions.

It will be interesting to see the FAP's explanation for the data changes that were made.  Doing data-fiddling like that on the sly is the technical and scientific equivalent of cooking the books in creative accounting. 

(See also related discussion on air quality monitoring)

The Fort Air Partnership responded to an inquiry that had been sent to them regarding the instance of data-fiddling that was reported here.  Their answer appears to indicate that such fiddling with data is common practice with them.  They did not identify how many such instances of data modification or omission took place and for what monitoring stations.  Thereby they left virtually all of the questions posed above unanswered.
   The fact remains that the air quality in our area is visibly deteriorating and that the Fort Air Partnership monitoring data provide no measure of the rate of air-quality deterioration.

______________
Posted 2007 04 17
Updates:
2007 04 19 (replaced the night photo of the DOW HCP flare stack, made updates to identify the owner of the flare stack, and added note on unexplained changes made to FAP data)
2007 05 19 (added reference to FAP's response to concerns about their data being changed or deleted)