Tribes learn how to measure pollution on reservations

Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2000 | 10:38 a.m.

Indian tribal leaders, Environmental Protection Agency officials and technical professionals opened an air quality training center in Las Vegas today that will teach 400 tribes how to sample air pollution.

On a concrete pad behind the EPA's quality assurance laboratory at UNLV, Indians from as far away as Florida are learning how to measure pollution and dust particles that sweep across vast reservations.

The Tribal Air Monitoring Support Center managed by the EPA and the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals of Flagstaff, Ariz., uses cutting-edge technology to train participants under real-world conditions, such as sunlight shining in their eyes as they try to read monitors and wind blowing field notes, the center's technical director Gregory Budd said.

By becoming partners with the EPA, tribes are closing the gap between pollution information gathered in urban areas, which have been blanketed with monitors for the past 20 years, and pollution never studied on closed reservation lands.

Since tribal lands are considered sovereign nations not under the authority of federal agencies, the EPA/Indian partnerships are unique, said Jed Harrison, director of the EPA's Radiation and Indoor Environments Laboratory in Las Vegas. The attention to tribal land came after Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1990.

The EPA spent about $1.2 million to set up the center to teach tribes to study the quality of reservation air, which can affect and be affected by neighboring air quality.

"It's the concept of helping them help themselves," Harrison said of the three-day training sessions that take participants from an 800-page reference book filled with federal air quality regulations to learning how to sample the air outdoors.

Another $800,000 has been spent in three grants to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community near Scottsdale, Ariz., for equipment and basic training, B. Bobby Ramirez, an air quality engineer, said.

Tribal leaders bring a unique perspective to the EPA.

"Tribes are tied to Mother Earth, so there is a cultural dimension to the technical work," Ramirez said.

Ramirez began his work as an air quality technician in El Paso, Texas, but moved to Arizona three years ago because of the opportunity for advanced training.

"This program is building a tribe's capacity to monitor the environment, the same as states and local governments have had for the past 20 years," Ramirez said.

"It's a two-way street," Harrison said. The EPA gains new information about the environment as well as tribal cultural concerns, he said.

"Most reservation lands are considered rural areas," Dwayne Beaver of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, said. Those lands were considered pristine.

But ozone levels discovered on Cherokee lands drifting from Tulsa about 50 miles away surprised both federal officials and tribal representatives, Beaver said.

Beaver said he has been monitoring air pollution for three years and started training as an instructor in November.

Classroom training has been available over the past three years at the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, said Dennis Wall of the institute, but there was no hands-on experience.

The institute has four major environmental programs covering training in air quality and environmental education, a tribal environmental resource center and professional training such as that done with EPA, Wall said.

"The tribes have the same concerns about the environment everybody else does," Wall said, noting that 125 tribes have teamed up with the EPA and the institute to learn about air pollution monitoring.

For David Sanchez of the Pojoaque Pueblo near Santa Fe, N.M., it was the first time he had worked with a dust sampler that can measure particles of 2.5 microns, a fraction of a human hair's width.

Sanchez and Adam Duran, also of Pojoaque Pueblo, will take back fresh knowledge to their people living 15 miles north of Santa Fe.

Duran said he had done ground water sampling and indoor air pollution studies before coming to the Las Vegas training center.