A Napa Valley Winemaker Says Air Quality Data Biased

The following is a letter written to the editors of Wine Industry Insight:

---

 

Hello Becca and Lew,

 

Regarding your link to the article about burning and smoke written by the Napa Valley Grapegrowers, I must fill in a few details.  Although reducing smoke is always a good thing, the entire Spare-the-Air program by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is based on falsified data.  Having worked there years ago, I kept an eye on this when Brad Wagenknecht brought it to the Napa Valley (I’ve spoken with him and he’s clueless about what the Air District actually does).

 

The single Napa Valley sensor that the Air District uses is located across Napa High School, literally above a Mexican bakery, and next to a nail salon, a beauty salon, a pastry shop, and downwind from a BBQ restaurant.  It is a small, commercial mall that sits on Napa’s busiest street at 2552 Jefferson Street.  All of this goes against both Air District and EPA rules which state that such sensors must be in residential neighborhoods.  The Air District knew this and requested a variance from the EPA; unfortunately, in their request, they essentially lied to the EPA by not explaining where the sensor was located but, instead, just discussing wind patterns.  It was only after I filed a complaint with the EPA a couple of years ago that they opened an investigation and subsequent audit at the Air District—I was told that the place was “crawling” with EPA investigators.

 

Last summer, the Air District announced that they are moving this single sensor to the Napa College.  Again, this is inappropriate and I have not been able to view any variance requests to the EPA which leads me to believe that they haven’t disclosed the location yet.  Given that this location is immediately downwind from Napa Pipe and the dust that that building 900 homes will create over the next few years, it is clear that they want to generate as dirty air data as possible.  I will follow up with the EPA in due course.

 

A bit of history: when Terry Lee, the PR person for the Air District came to Napa to sell Spare-the-Air years ago, she was received very poorly and it was made clear that no one wanted to be part of this.  There was loud opposition.  When she left, her parting shot was, “this isn’t over yet.”  Since then, I believe that they have been intentionally targeting Napa and trying to make us look like the worst polluters in the Bay Area.  We’re clearly not, at least any rational person would see that.

 

Napa is faulted for over 80% of the no-burn days issued by the Air District.  We know that this is statistically impossible—we all know that the air quality in San Jose and Santa Clara is always worse than Napa’s.  Furthermore, two of the four Santa Clara air sensors are literally sitting on small airport runways… again, in violation of both Air District and EPA rules.  So why blame us?

 

By the way, I download their data 3 times per day during the winter spare-the-air season and can prove the above statements.

 

My point is that the commission they have formed for reducing smoke is using tainted data (pun intended) from the Air District.  Using falsified data never yields a rational outcome.

 

Kind regards,

 

Robert Morey, Napa