Local environmental advocates are taking precautionary measures to help neighborhoods near Interstate 81, where residents have for decades lived with the negative health impacts of that structure, brace themselves against air pollution.
The Onondaga Environmental Institute will manage three new air quality monitors at three city-owned community centers — Wilson Park Community Center, Cannon Street Community Center and Cecile Community Center — to track quality of air amid ongoing construction on I-81.
These new air quality monitors are the latest addition to an existing triad of sensors along the I-81 viaduct managed by the Onondaga Environmental Institute. The City of Syracuse will not incur any additional costs to install these monitors which are largely funded by environmental grants awarded to the institute.
Last year, the institute partnered with Focusing Our Resources for Community Engagement CNY to host six workshops from October through December where they taught residents living in the shadow of the I-81 viaduct about the pitfalls of construction, including deteriorating air quality, as well as how to use air quality monitors.
The existing three research-grade air quality monitors, one of which is located on the roof of a building at the intersection of East Adams Street and Almond Street, send data back to researchers for analysis.
The data is accessible to the public through a digital dashboard developed by justAir, an organization that develops air quality platforms. Residents can sign up to receive alerts from nearby monitors when air quality is potentially harmful. Alerts will remind residents to take precautionary measures, including wearing masks and spending more time indoors on days when the pollution levels are especially bad.
Onondaga Environmental Institute does not have an exact timeline on when the new monitors will be installed, but Amy Samuels, the institute’s education and outreach coordinator, expects them to be up within the next couple months.
“Community centers were an obvious choice because they’re there to serve the community,” Samuels said. “All the centers that identified were ultimately really excited to have been selected, excited about working with us to continue to offer programming. In that sense, that’s a win.”
With the viaduct replacement project on the horizon, environmental advocates are keeping close tabs on the change in air quality over time. Particulate matter levels are generally higher near or along existent highways, and advocates expect those levels to only increase near a highway undergoing demolition.
These monitors will determine how much pollution is caused by particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. The smaller the particles, the greater the harm they cause. Breathing unhealthy levels of these particles may increase the risk of asthma, heart disease and low birth weight. Particle pollution may particularly be harmful for children, older adults, pregnant women and those with underlying cardiac or respiratory problems.
Other partners involved in the workshops include Onondaga Earth Corps, SUNY Upstate Medical University, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, the city of Syracuse and the Syracuse City School District.
Councilor Chol Majok, who sponsored legislation granting permission to the Onondaga Environmental Institute to install the monitors, grew up in a house three houses down from the community center on Cannon Street.
“I used to play basketball in that same spot when I was in high school,” Majok said. “So to be able to bring something like that to that specific space helps, because that area is going to be affected by I-81, obviously, it’s not too far.”
Preparing for negative environmental impacts in two neighborhoods the city has historically neglected, Majok said, is a step toward hearing and meeting the needs of long-neglected neighborhoods ahead of time, before residents there are negatively impacted by construction and redevelopment projects.”
“Out of all the community conversation years back about bringing down I-81, what really resonated with everybody was that we are going to do things differently than we did back in the day, and that is being conscious of the damage that was already done,” Majok said.
More than 50 years ago, the 1956 Federal Highway Act provided funds to construct a 1.4-mile elevated portion of the I-81 highway, known as the viaduct. The highway ran through 27 blocks of the historically Black neighborhood, the 15th Ward. More than 1,300 families were displaced with their neighborhoods razed to the ground.
The building of the viaduct has had long-term socioeconomic impacts on displaced, predominantly Black residents. As they struggled to look for new places to live, they faced housing discrimination and inequality. Black residents moving and living near the viaduct bore the brunt of air pollution leading to high rates of asthma and other respiratory issues. Demolition of this viaduct is expected to be completed by 2028.
“So as we redo this, we are conscious not only of the community assets but also individual health: how do we protect that?” Majok said.
Technological advancements have helped increase accuracy and affordability of air quality monitors, Samuels said. This has allowed the institute to create a hyperlocal network of sensors collecting air quality data in different locations and corroborating them with the metrics on the more expensive, regulatory grade sensors.
“Why we’re seeing this now, part of it is driven by these environmental justice concerns, but part of it’s made possible by the monitors coming down in price over time,” Samuels said. “So you don’t have to be a university researcher with a million, few million dollars to do this work.”
At a time when many stakeholders leading these projects speak about the need to avoid recreating past harm, Samuels and Majok agree that the installation of these monitors demonstrates the community’s commitment to protecting itself from repeating harmful history.
And this may just be the start.
“We might get to a point where, if the sensors are doing their job, we may be able to say, as a city, since this is working, let’s expand it,” Majok said.
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