By the numbers: A look at COVID’s effect on services
Cleaner air good news as more people take it outside, says Jennifer Saltman.
Over the last few months, Metro Vancouver has monitored how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the services it provides to the region. Some are essential, like clean drinking water, sewage treatment and solid waste disposal, and others are less obvious but also important, like keeping regional parks open and tracking air quality.
The information below is gathered from the regional district’s COVID-19 data dashboard.
61 per cent increase
Regional park visits are up during the pandemic as residents try to escape their homes and enjoy the outdoors. While all provincial parks and recreation sites were closed for a time, regional parks, with a few exceptions, remained open.
“I think with people spending a lot more time at home, it’s been really important to their physical health and their mental health to get out,” Metro’s chief administrative officer Jerry Dobrovolny said recently.
He pointed out that health officials have emphasized the importance of access to outdoor areas and recommended visiting parks.
In May, regional park visits were up 61 per cent compared to the same month last year, and in April were up 67 per cent.
135,943 interactions
Metro Vancouver parks staff put up hundreds of signs urging people to stay at least two metres from other parks users, and from the middle of April until the end of June, have passed that message along in person to almost 136,000 people.
“That’s where we’ve had a real push on our workload,” said Dobrovolny.
“It’s all common sense stuff — none of it is rocket science — but you know, the public in the early days needed to have a lot of reminding.”
Dobrovolny said parks users have complied with physical distancing measures, despite the fact that parks have been busier.
34 per cent decrease
The regional district has 31 air quality monitoring stations that measure concentrations of air contaminants. Pandemic-related restrictions meant fewer people were driving, so three key stations saw decreases in the amount of nitrogen dioxide, a component of traffic emissions, in the air. At the Burnaby-Kensington monitoring station, just south of Hastings in North Burnaby, nitrogen dioxide levels in May were 34 per cent lower than the four-year average (2016-19) for the same month. The levels were 29 per cent lower in May at the Clark Drive station, which is on a major truck route and near 12th Avenue in Vancouver. The downtown monitoring station in Robson Square recorded a 16 per cent decrease in nitrogen dioxide in May.
3.1 per cent decrease
Dobrovolny said solid waste “has been a little slow” during the pandemic.
The regional district measures the amount of trash — not including recycling or organics — received at its five transfer stations and waste-to-energy facility in Burnaby each week.
Year to date, there has been a 3.1 per cent decrease in solid waste system tonnage compared to the four-year average. The most noticeable weekly decreases (about 15 per cent) took place during three weeks between the end of March and middle of May.
“Garbage, that usually reflects the economy a little more directly because of the business clients,” said Dobrovolny.