Upper Green River Basin, WY – Last week, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) – Air Quality Division (AQD) began conducting an air quality study of commercial oilfield waste disposal ponds in the Upper Green River Basin.
The study is part of the AQD’s Upper Green River Basin Ozone Strategy. The goal of the study is to develop a method for accurately characterizing disposal pond air emissions.
According to Cara Keslar, AQD Monitoring program supervisor, the AQD and its team of contractors, GSI Environmental Inc., Kassay, Utah State University, and Texas A&M University are working cooperatively with commercial oilfield waste disposal facilities (Calpet, LLC and Anticline Disposal, Inc.) to measure air emissions onsite at the LaBarge and Pinedale facilities.
“We are using three methods to monitor the air concentrations coming off the ponds,” said Keslar “This includes an open path spectrometer that uses an infrared beam to measure different compounds over a long distance, summa canisters that collect air samples, and a flux chamber that collects additional air samples from the surface of the ponds.”
These measurements are taken in conjunction with water quality samples from the ponds and will be used to develop a model to quantify emission rates.
The AQD will return to the Upper Green River Basin in winter 2016 for another field measurement campaign. For more information on the study and the AQD’s Upper Green River Basin Ozone Strategy visit us at www.deq.wyoming.gov.
###
For media inquiries, please contact
Cara Keslar
cara.keslar@wyo.gov
307-777-8684