MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY – An air quality monitoring organization has given the all-clear after recently wrapping up a program in the Eagle Hill and Eagle Valley areas of Mountain View County.
Parkland Airshed Management Zone (PAMZ) completed an air monitoring project in the area that was funded by a creative sentencing order from the Alberta Court of Justice following an Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act infraction.
Whitecap Resources Inc. had previously been charged by the regulator in the summer of 2023 over an incident in June 2021 at one of the company’s gas wells near Didsbury that had malfunctioned and caused the release of deadly hydrogen sulphide.
Despite the release of anywhere from 649 to 1,418 cubic metres of the highly hazardous gas, there “were no injuries, property damage, or permanent environmental harm reported," according to a previously-released statement of facts.
The company was ultimately ordered to pay an $80,000 penalty, of which $78,000 was allocated towards a creative sentencing projects while the remaining $2,000 went to the Alberta Court of Justice as a fine.
PAMZ was subsequently awarded the contract following a request for proposal published by the AER at the court’s direction.
The organization had submitted a winning bid to the regulator to employ its Dr. Martha Kostuch portable air quality monitoring station to either address a specific air quality issue identified in the Mountain View County region or collect data to enhance the organization’s knowledge base on the air quality in the area.
The project was championed by Mountain View County and PAMZ conducted an open house in Olds during the summer of 2024 to consult the public and solicit input on where the monitoring should occur.
A mobile monitoring station was later deployed from October 2024 to April 2025, during which no exceedances of Alberta Ambient Air Quality Objectives were recorded, reads a press release issued by PAMZ on July 10.
“This means essentially there were no air quality issues identified during that timeframe,” stated Kevin Warren, PAMZ executive director.
“The levels of monitored pollutants were similar to those measured at our Caroline Monitoring Site during the same period and consistent with the historical levels we’ve observed at other rural locations through our Ambient Air Monitoring Program.”
Warren also noted that air quality in both Eagle Valley and Eagle Hill was classified as very good.
“We observed extremely low ambient levels of sulphur gases, and the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) registered a Low Health Risk 99.5 per cent of the time,” he added.
The monitoring results will be shared with residents at a future presentation for the Eagle Valley and Eagle Hill communities.
Parkland Airshed Management Zone is a multi-stakeholder non-profit organization consisting of industry, government, environmental organizations and the public that was formed in 1997 to monitor and manage air quality within the Parkland Region.
The area it encompasses includes communities within the central Alberta region, running from Three Hills in the east to the B.C. border in the west and from just north of Crossfield in the south to just north of Ponoka in the north.
