For those Red Deer and area residents who had questions or concerns about the air quality, the Parkland Airshed Management Zone (PAMZ) held a public issues identification meeting last night at the Snell Auditorium inside the Red Deer Public Library.

The point of this meeting was not only to address residents concerns, but to decide on where to send their portable air quality monitor for 2018, the location which will be determined by recommendations from this meeting, and also from looking though complaints residents filed throughout the year.

Kevin Warren is the Executive Director of PAMZ, and he explains how PAMZ uses a mobile unit, as well as several stationary air quality systems, to monitor the air quality in our region.

"We have two permanent stations here in Red Deer, and a permanent station south and east of Caroline, and a temporary monitoring station just east of Ponoka. The portable station right now is in the town of Sundre, and there are concerns there from residents about emissions from gravel pits, so we are going to monitoring there for the month of May, then we will be going back in October and do a second month of monitoring."

PAMZ monitors over 42 thousand square feet of air in Alberta, from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to just east of highway two. That areas incudes all villages and towns within that area, as well as the city of Red Deer.