Dust Control on Alaska’s Village and Rural Roads Yields Community Benefits (TPD1010028)

Our village roads are too dusty, too often (ADEC & EPA will have to enforce PM-10 regs, if  we don’t act to reduce fugitive dust releases?) Noorvik

Many Alaska villages are known to be affected

Airborne Dust has negative impacts:

• •       Causes housekeeping issues !
• Obscures visibility on unpaved roadways
• •       Interferes with normal plant growth
• Pollutes adjacent waterways
• •       Can cause health problems, particularly in infants, the elderly and people with common respiratory problems

Primary/Available Methods to Minimize Road Dust

• Prepare road and pave?  (Quite expensive, improbable)
• Apply crushed aggregate surfacing? (supply & funding difficult)
  • Apply water to reduce dust? (Frequency?                                                                         Every day?)
  • Apply community speed limits?  (Need broad “buy-in”)
  • Apply chemical dust palliatives? (Funding? Health risks?)
    • Combination of several alternatives from above – ???

DUST CONTROL PRODUCTS

(recent uses at Northern Region sites)

Calcium Chloride (often used on roads & highways) Water !! (not very practical for our traffic, but safe?)

and various “chemical palliatives”

EK-35     (used at 25+ airports, over the last 10 years) Durasoil®  (applied @ airports & roads in last 4 years) EnviroKleen (applied @ Eagle; and Kawarek villages) Earth Armour               (synthetic liquid – used @ Noorvik, 2010) LSP-400 (used on Kobuk/Shungnak roads with BIA IRR funds) Freedom Binder 400 (used on Mat-Su & NP roads in 2010)

Larger “villages” do watering:  Nome, Kotzebue, Bethel, etc.

DOT&PF–managed road work @ Tanana, applying Durasoil®                          – during Fall 2007

Tanana typical village road: treated August 2007

Kawerak applied EnviroKleen at 19 Western villages

(2006 & 2007)

EnviroKleen was applied on 4 miles of Eagle’s roads: spring 2010; with Denali Commission funding

Participating villages for the summer 2010 dust control “trials”

As specified in the FY09 capital grant: Ambler

• Ambler
• Bethel
• Buckland
• Kiana
• Kotzebue
• Noatak
• Noorvik
• St. Marys

Bethel Buckland Kiana Kotzebue Noatak Noorvik St. Marys

Durasoil applied at Bethel; 2010

“Practise” spraying (with water) at Ambler; 2010

Airports can cause dust releases too !!

Successful application of EK-35: Numam Iqua Airport – 2007

(just one of 48 airports treated with palliatives since 2000)