B.C. Air Action Plan

B.C.’s Air Initiatives

· The BC government has developed the B.C. Air Action Plan, which sets aside $28.5 million over three years to improve and enhance air quality across the province and protect the people’s health.

· Plan focuses on clean transportation , clean industry, clean communities

· All were expected to be in place by 2009.

· Clean Communities

o Taking an active role in airshed planning

o Supporting the replacement of old wood stoves with cleaner alternatives

o Enforcing a provincial smoke-management plan

o Research on air quality and health

· Clean Industry

o Aiming to reduce the air quality or impact of industry emissions

o New policies that insist factories use the ‘best available, economically feasible, pollution-control technologies’

o Clean up industrial boilers

o Reducing emissions

o Eliminate beehive burners

o Various more

· Clean transportation

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  14 billion towards transportation (clean vehicles & fuels, public transit, cycling & pedestrian routes, new rapid transit lines)


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  Government is taking several actions to accomplish this such as: maintaining tax breaks on hybrid vehicles, creating a Scrap-It Program to get old cars off the road, anti-idling movement, new clean-energy school buses, along with various other movements.

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  Government will also be carrying out several efforts which support their B.C. Air Action Plan

· LiveSmart BC – encourages individuals & communities to make more energy efficient choices for their homes, vehicles, and businesses

· ActNow – encourages healthy lifestyle choices such as green transportation

· BC Scrap-It Now Program – removing old, polluting vehicles off the road

· Canada-wide Standards for Particulate Matter and Ozone – minimizing rick particulate matter and ozone pose to human health and our environment.

· New Ambient Air Quality Criteria for PM – guide air management decisions on a day-to-day basis

· Air Quality Legislation – addressing air pollution through legislation, codes of practice, permits & standards.

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  Variations of the B.C. Air Action Plan are also happening at a municipal & federal level

I think that this is a really good and efficiant way to deal with air pollution, and that our city should innitiate somethign along the same lines.