As you may have heard, the Boulder County Commissioners have decided to drop support for their air quality monitoring program in 2025. This is unfortunate, since this hardly seems appropriate. The air quality in the Front Range has been getting worse, not better, so removing this key data gathering point would weaken the ability of the Boulder community to argue for improving it. It could also weaken regional support from neighboring jurisdictions for their own programs — such as we want to get here in Larimer County.

The Boulder AIR monitoring at the Boulder Reservoir was the first such program to go into operation in September 2017. It did not have a specific mandate other than to notify the county Health Department if it spotted a specific threat to the environment.

One such threat is methane, or natural gas, a key GHG because it is more potent that carbon dioxide in causing global warming. By providing key data about methane emissions detected there from 2017 to 2019, this furnished the Colorado legislature with sufficient information to enact statewide rules in 2020 that mandated adoption of better control valves that let less methane escape during wellsite operations. (See ‘Colorado Passed the Nations First Regulations on Pneumatic Controllers‘, Colorado Local Science Network, March 2021). 

Dr Helmig, CEO of Boulder AIR, informed me of the findings from the air monitoring, which I would otherwise have been quite unaware. How the state legislature discovered that O&G operations could reduce their methane leaks by using better valves remains a mystery; but the point is that Boulder’s monitoring station provided the key information that was needed. It provided the impetus needed to focus on the specific pollution source; and, since then, has quantified how much that pollution source has been reduced.

None of this would be possible, of course, if such accurate, reliable and comprehensive (in terms of continuous time measurements) data were not available. If anything, Boulder County should be continuing its air quality program, and working with the other Boulder AIR monitoring stations to improve their identification of the specific sources of our air pollution.

The commissioners may say, no doubt, that they justify the elimination of the program based on its cost. (Such Boulder AIR stations cost about $250 thousand a year to operate.) While it is easy to identify the cost of this operation, it is more difficult to identify the benefits; but the benefits are there. In the previous article mentioned above, it estimated that such valves caused “29% of the oil industry air emissions nationally”; which, according to the EPA, “estimates that these devices emit nearly 2 million tons of methane a year into the air nationwide.” That sounds like sound benefits to me; but, of course, those are benefits the Boulder county commissioners seem to have a hard time seeing.

I would note that Broomfield dropped its support for their Boulder AIR station before too. In October 2023, a divided council narrowly voted to end that program, based on suggestions from its city manager, Jennifer Hoffman. But after much public outcry and testimony in the following months, the council reversed its decision, and the Boulder AIR stations (Soaring Eagle and North Pecos) were restored later in 2024.

The Boulder commissioners might want to examine what happened in Broomfield before making their decision. There is an undeniable need for such monitoring to protect our public health; what is in question is the political will of our local officials to supply it.