ERIE – — A study showing that Erie exceeds Houston and Los Angeles in the levels of certain air pollutants commonly connected to oil and gas activity became a point of concern for several trustees Tuesday night during a meeting held to formulate local rules for resource extraction.
“I was kind of shocked by the things I heard,” said Trustee Ronda Grassi, after listening to a presentation from a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Steven Brown, a NOAA scientist in Boulder, told the trustees and a roomful of industry experts that an air monitoring study conducted in Erie last winter revealed that levels of butane, ethane and propane — compounds associated with oil and gas drilling and production — were “large.”
Specifically, Brown said Erie’s propane levels exceeded by a factor of 10 those detected in Pasadena, Calif., in 2010.
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