Quietly getting on with it

Multipoint Plan earns widespread respect

The Air Quality Monitoring System that ECOSERV manages and operates for eThekwini Municipality is proving to be a first-class magnet for accolades and respect.

“Our Air Quality Monitoring System is a year down the track and ECOSERV is quietly getting on with the job,” says ECOSERV MD Quentin Hurt. “We have installed and mastered a lot of new, complex equipment and technology in a relatively short space of time. During the past year we have refined operations to ensure we can meet the daily capture objectives: to see that operations run optimally, that the data we collect is reliable and sufficient. Data capture is improved under the new system.”

ECOSERV won the tender for the system in October 2003 as part of previous Environmental Affairs Minister Valli Moosa’s Multipoint Plan to find solutions to the air quality issues in the South Industrial Basin. ECOSERV has since assisted with the implementation and management of the expanded air monitoring network (increasing the original five stations to 11).

“The concentration of stations is still in Durban South but distribution has been extended to City Hall, Warwick Junction, Durban North and inland at Alverston,” says Quentin. “This represents a much more comprehensive monitoring response. We now monitor a broader range of gases and pollutants. While monitoring previously focused on sulphur dioxide it now encompasses oxides of nitrogen (typically associated with traffic emissions) and fine particulate. We have also assisted with the development and operation of a separate organic compound monitoring system for the Municipality, monitoring emissions such as benzene and other air toxics.”

The City’s South Durban Basin Multi-Point Plan Newsletter (November 2004), speaks glowingly of the monitoring network: “ eThekwini now has a functioning Air Quality Monitoring network. Since March 2004, real-time data access has been possible in the eThekwini Health Department through dedicated data lines and data acquisition systems. This development represents a four-fold increase in monitoring capacity. The availability of data to government in real-time is a significant improvement as it facilitates efficient decision-making ... Durban has become a learning centre in the development of an integrated air quality network, and ideas are being conceptualized to link the air quality information system to the regulatory system. This development will provide hands-on experience in addressing some of the challenges likely to emerge when the Air Quality Bill passes into law.”

The Municipal team has won three awards for the MPP implementation - The Most Sustainable Environmental Health Project in SA at the 8th World Congress on Environmental Health (February 2004), the Mail & Guardian’s Greening the Future Awards, and the City Stars Competition for best teamwork.

Other accolades come from European and American air quality experts, who are reported in the newsletter as describing the “Durban air quality monitoring network, data processing and reporting capabilities of the system as state-of-the-art and highly integrated”.

Durban’s Mayor, Councillor Obed Mlaba, said in the newsletter: “We now have the capacity within local government to understand the complexities of air quality management and to translate problems into solutions.”