Union Park District Council (UPDC)
AIRNET resources for the Union Park neighborhood
Union Park District Council is a community partner with an interest in understanding vehicle traffic influences on air pollution and the spatial distribution of air pollution in its area. Learn more about the community below..
Presentations
Workgroup session 1, May 27, 2025, Spruce Tree Center (view presentation): First community meeting that discussed the project goals and objectives as well as timelines. The participants received a brief air quality introduction and discussed the main concerns related to air pollution in their neighborhood. The top three air pollution sources of concern were identified to further narrow down and identify specific pollutants to monitor for the project.
Workgroup session 2, June 26, 2025, Spruce Tree center (view presentation): Second community group meeting that built upon the sources discussed in the first session. Top pollutants to monitor were identified, and two to three options, along with suitable sensors and associated costs, were presented based on previous source discussions. A tabletop mapping exercise was conducted to identify potential sites for placing monitors.
Quarterly reports (forthcoming 2026)
Deployment plans (forthcoming 2026)
Introduction to the community
UPDC is the District 13 planning council in St. Paul, Minnesota. UPDC works to engage the power of the community to advance neighborhood vitality and develop neighborhood leadership.
The neighborhood currently has no publicly available air quality monitoring data. The nearest regulatory air monitor run by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is ~2.4 miles east of the neighborhood at Ramsey Health Center in downtown St. Paul, which measures volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbonyls, coarse particles (PM10), and fine particles (PM2.5). There is also a temporary regulatory station located at the Northern Iron facility about 4.25 miles northeast that measures total suspended particulates, metals, and lead. The nearest site measuring nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is at the MPCA’s Near Road I-35/I-94 site in the Phillips/Ventura Village neighborhood in Minneapolis, about 2.3 miles northwest. There are no PurpleAir or other individually owned sensors in the neighborhood, but there are some located in adjacent neighborhoods.
Union Park currently has 10 active air permits within their neighborhood. MPCA’s records going back to July of 2021 show that none of these permits have been violated.
Air monitoring objectives
We want to monitor transportation pollution in Union Park to understand the impacts that transit has on air pollution in the community, with the goal of using the data to work with the City of Saint Paul, the Metropolitan Council, Minnesota Department of Transportation, and MPCA to come up with solutions to decrease transportation pollution. Our main concerns focus on passenger vehicles and light-to-medium duty trucks (non-diesel). This project will extensively monitor NO2 and PM2.5 at locations of high traffic and comparison sites, and black carbon in an area where truck idling has been identified as a problem by the community, to get a comprehensive understanding of local traffic pollution. We will also prioritize alerting community members about unhealthy air quality levels.