Area Features Best Air Quality Around
Linda Weeks gets excited when she talks about air.
Weeks, an environmental specialist, has been monitoring air quality on the Fort Peck Reservation since 1984. She was visiting with other residents during the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribal Department Exposition held in Wolf Point on Tuesday, Nov. 19. The departments featured included cultural resources, Disaster and Emergency Service, Economic Development, Information Technology, Environmental Protection and Indian Reservation Roads.
Weeks explains that the reservation has one of only seven SURFRAD (Surface Radiation Budget) Network stations in the entire United States. The network was established in the early 1990s to support climate research with accurate, continuous, long-term measurements of the surface radiation budget.
Week said the network monitors such things as air, wind speed, temperature, barometric pressure and soil.
As far as the air quality in the area, Weeks said tests have shown that the air is similar to a national forest.
“We have the best air there is,” Weeks said.
A new duty that Fort Peck’s environmental department will take on is testing for radon in as many Fort Peck Reservation households as possible.
The department also uses Purple Air sensors to measure airborne particulate matter. The items include solid particles suspended in the air such as dust, smoke and pollen. Measurements are then used to quantify different thresholds and their related air quality impacts on human health.
