ORCAA holds dedication ceremony for Thurston County air monitoring station 

The Olympic Region Clean Air Agency (ORCAA) held a dedication ceremony for its new Thurston County air quality monitoring station on April 8, where it honored a pioneer of its air monitoring program. 

The station, located at Mountain View Elementary School in Lacey, was formally named the James P. Werner Air Monitoring Station. 

In a statement issued on Monday, April 13, the agency said board members, ORCAA staff, Washington State Department of Ecology colleagues, Werner's friends and family, and representatives from Mountain View Elementary and City of Lacey attended the ceremony. 

As The JOLT previously reported, Werner joined ORCAA in 1981 as a laboratory technician and later became the agency's original air monitoring specialist. He developed and implemented the agency's monitoring program across all six counties it serves. 

In 1992, he and former ORCAA Compliance Supervisor Robert Moody built the original monitoring shelter at the Mountain View site. Werner retired in 2012 after more than 31 years of service and died unexpectedly in June 2025. 

Mountain View Elementary has hosted ORCAA's Thurston County monitoring station for decades, the agency said in a news release. 

The aging structure was replaced with a new shelter in August 2025, which now measures PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter), ozone, black carbon and meteorological data, and serves as a testing platform for new technologies. 

That same year, the ORCAA Board of Directors voted unanimously in November to approve Resolution 287, authorizing the station's dedication in Werner's name.