Air Quality information available online
Perry Walker, an optical physicist, is monitoring local air quality
by Dawn Ballou, Pinedale Online!
May 23, 2007
Perry Walker is a former United States Air Force optical physicist who lives in Daniel, Wyoming He is also an amateur astronomer, a life-long passion that started when he was 13 years old living in Green River, Wyoming. He has built several telescopes, including an elaborate telescope observatory on his 10 acres in Daniel. He also has extensive air quality monitoring equipment which he regularly monitors and is using to establish baseline air quality data and record changes to local air quality over time with activity occurring in the Upper Green River Valley.
“In 2003, as an amateur astronomer, I realized that the night sky had lost some clarity compared to ten years earlier,” he said. He concluded that part of the reason for the murkier skies was directly related to the increasing activity in the Jonah gas field. He used his knowledge and expertise to start studying what the emissions were and how they are degrading local visibility. He has spent years compiling information about local air quality. Recently, he put up a website that contains a wealth of data from his research. “I decided in 2003 that I had to do something to alert the citizens and regulators about the growing impacts that were resulting from the rapid increase in drilling,” he said
Walker has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics from the University of Wyoming and a Master’s Degree in Energy Engineering, Nuclear Power Specialization, from the University of Lowell, Massachusetts. He has received funding from the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Wilderness Society for his air quality monitoring efforts. When the Wagon Wheel Society Sublette County group disbanded in 2005, they gave Walker the $3200 they still had in their account to go towards his air quality monitoring efforts.
Click on this link to go to his air quality monitoring website: www.pinedaleairquality.com
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