What suggestions can we offer to local, provincial, and federal departments to introduce rule changes more reflective of aviation needs?
What would be a reasonable distance from an airfield to build a pulp or OSB mill? A lumber mill with a beehive burner? A refinery? A dam?
It would appear that TC have no enforceable rules included in their
"Land Use Near an Airport" policy, and plan their own flights into places like Quesnel to avoid spring and fall conditions.
My questions relate to the absence of aviation related parameters of ceilings and visibilities required in the modeling submitted for assessments at Environmental Boards, as per recent example in BC.
Another, and I would like to draw on your experiences here, is how far downwind from a large mill can moisture exist in a plume before it completely freezes in winter conditions? How far from the stack can supercooled liquid persist? Will it persist further downwind if a beehive burner is also putting particulate into the same air??
Has any one heard the results of the airs-icing.org study where they were hoping to develop better instrumentation, to be mounted on the aircraft or possibly on the airfield, to detect super cooled moisture?
As it is, the provincial MOE appears to have no intention of monitoring the impacts at our airfields. And they have no formulae for calculating the value of a lost hour of usability of the airfield. So what has been your experience? Can you detect and avoid these plumes when they are embedded in low cloud, or in snow, or in darkness? What solution can we offer?
Update: Environmental Appeal Board hearing now scheduled in Sept. Any expertise out there willing to help? Thinking pilots, controllers, av wx forecasters...retired is fine...may be able to save our younger fliers some grief later on.
Update: Hearing now set for Sept 19/20 at Courthouse YXJ...too many empty seats would not be a good signal from Aviation. WCEL have supported this with legal from YXS, YYJ and climatological expertise from U VIC & U BC. Interesting how supercooled moisture is viewed and 6 year period the consultant used to establish normals happens to co-incide with worst El Nino ever recorded. Probably just a co-inkidink?
