AB 617 portable lab to relocate for a yearlong air monitoring campaign; steering committee approved alternate site

Levi Ford, program supervisor for the district's air monitoring section, updated the board on Aug. 28 about the AB 617 portable laboratory and a new portable lab air monitoring campaign in the South Sacramento/Florin community. Ford summarized AB 617's purpose — directing local air districts and communities to develop community air monitoring and emissions-reduction plans — and recounted the portable lab's deployment history, including sampling that began in May 2023 at a Fern Bacon Middle School location.

Ford said that after nearly two years at Fern Bacon Middle School the steering committee recommended moving the portable lab to a different site within the expanded AB 617 boundary. "The steering committee voted, and the alternate location passed," Ford said; the district reported it presented an alternate site in June 2025 and that it met the lab's needs for an on-site power source and unobstructed airflow. Ford said the district is finalizing an agreement with the City of Sacramento and anticipates beginning monitoring in 2025. "The portable lab will monitor at its location for a minimum of a year to get full diurnal and seasonal patterns," he said, and that all data collected will be shared with the community at steering committee meetings and posted on the district website.

During the subsequent APCO report, the Air Pollution Control Officer said the lab is slated to move to a location adjacent to Executive Airport and acknowledged community interest that airport operations could be a source of emissions, including lead. The officer said previous sampling campaigns in the area have not shown ambient concentrations of lead near national standards. "We are not seeing those emissions impact the ambient air around the community," he said, but added the district will collect updated yearlong data and bring a fuller discussion back to the board before the end of the year.

Board members asked technical questions about siting, prevailing winds and how the mobile lab's data would be used. One director noted the mobile lab's instruments can measure at or above federal monitoring levels; the district said its mobile laboratory provides robust, model-ready data and that the one-year deployment will help define diurnal and seasonal trends. Ford and APCO staff said they are coordinating with airport officials and will publish results and steering committee updates as data are collected.