The Town of Okotoks will soon have live air quality readings available.
A portable air monitoring laboratory (PAML) has been set up in town through a collaboration between the Calgary Region Airshed Zone (CRAZ), Alberta Environment and Protected Areas, and the Town.
CRAZ is a non-profit that performs air quality monitoring in several Southern Alberta municipalities on behalf of the provincial government.
Their PAML, which is set up at 63 Wilson Street near Okotoks Junior High School and Percy Pegler School, will gather air quality data until July 31, 2025.
The data will provide a snapshot of the region's ambient air quality and establish an air quality health index for the area.
Previously, Calgary's air quality stats were assigned to Okotoks.
Air Quality Program Manager for CRAZ, Mandeep Dhaliwal, saysÂ
"Any time you have a difference in wind patterns, you'll have a difference in air quality. It also depends on what the source is. If there's an event like, for example, forest fires going on, the impact varies a bit, geographically. So you can have similar results, but at the same time, the results can be quite different. We have three stations in Calgary and one in Airdrie, and oftentimes the Airdrie station is more impacted by forest fires or other localized events, and sometimes the Calgary stations are worse."
CRAZ has been working with Alberta Environment and Protected Areas on their 2025 Five-Year Air Quality and Deposition, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Plan, which identified gaps in air quality monitoring in many communities in Alberta.
Okotoks was one of the communities that has lacked air quality monitoring, and was shortlisted for the five-year program.
Dhaliwal says the data will be shared with the Province and will be displayed to the public in a few places.
"We're communicating all the information to them, and in about a week or two, the AQHI levels will start showing up on the Alberta AQHI map as well as the CRAZ website. You'll also see the AQHI levels on the Weather Canada app."
The PAML collects air quality data in one-minute intervals, though the current AQHI level will be updated for the public hourly.
CRAZ hasn't started posting their data yet, though it's expected to start in a week or two.
"The Town was very keen, which is the reason why we were able to find a site very quickly and deploy this unit. It can take months to even a year to find a suitable location. The Town was very supportive and things in palce pretty quickly for us to install the site."
The data will be available on the Town of Okotoks website, the Alberta AQHI map, and the CRAZ website.