Air Pollution Problems

[The Canadian Stig 0]

In my last couple of cities, I've been experiencing an odd issue with air pollution. Naturally, I place all of my industry and dirty utilities down wind to prevent pollution from being blown across town. However, when I check my data map, it says there are pockets of air pollution across town and sometimes, frustratingly, on my residential and commercial areas which causes sims to become sick and eventually leave. I have no other cities in the region meaning none of it could be blown in from neighbors and the wind map, in theory, indicates that the pollution that my industry and utilities create should be blown away from the rest of my town. So, that leaves me wondering, where is the pollution originating from? Is it a glitch or is there another mechanic in the game that I'm missing?? 

 

PS -- Is there anyway I can get rid of it or even prevent it?

[wags13604 11]

I know traffic is one of the main sources of pollution for commercial
and residential if your roads are packed you might consider mass transit
to get a few cars off the road. But other than that I'm not sure what
to tell you.

[ifurkend 0]

Need verification, but I suspect a city with high air pollution industry is contagious to the neighouring cities regardless of wind direction of individual city. Because I get the air pollution message very early on when starting my second city next to my moderately developed city.

[SquidInABox 15]

In my last couple of cities, I've been experiencing an odd issue with air pollution. Naturally, I place all of my industry and dirty utilities down wind to prevent pollution from being blown across town. However, when I check my data map, it says there are pockets of air pollution across town and sometimes, frustratingly, on my residential and commercial areas which causes sims to become sick and eventually leave. I have no other cities in the region meaning none of it could be blown in from neighbors and the wind map, in theory, indicates that the pollution that my industry and utilities create should be blown away from the rest of my town. So, that leaves me wondering, where is the pollution originating from? Is it a glitch or is there another mechanic in the game that I'm missing?? 

 

PS -- Is there anyway I can get rid of it or even prevent it?

Traffic is a big contributor to air pollution both from your own roads and the Highway. The only solution to pollution from traffic is to have less traffic problems. If you have a huge traffic jam on the highway for 12 hours of each day those cars are generating lots of pollution which is getting blown into your city. Just converting traffic into buses won't solve everything if those buses are also getting stuck in jams all day. Streetcars, ferries and trains will generate less pollution while also helping get the traffic moving.

EDIT: Ideally if you can design your city so that all the low/mid wealth sims walk everywhere and only the high wealth sims are driving around pollution from traffic should be at a minimum. Good luck with this task though

[The Canadian Stig 0]

In my last couple of cities, I've been experiencing an odd issue with air pollution. Naturally, I place all of my industry and dirty utilities down wind to prevent pollution from being blown across town. However, when I check my data map, it says there are pockets of air pollution across town and sometimes, frustratingly, on my residential and commercial areas which causes sims to become sick and eventually leave. I have no other cities in the region meaning none of it could be blown in from neighbors and the wind map, in theory, indicates that the pollution that my industry and utilities create should be blown away from the rest of my town. So, that leaves me wondering, where is the pollution originating from? Is it a glitch or is there another mechanic in the game that I'm missing?? 

 

PS -- Is there anyway I can get rid of it or even prevent it?

Traffic is a big contributor to air pollution both from your own roads and the Highway. The only solution to pollution from traffic is to have less traffic problems. If you have a huge traffic jam on the highway for 12 hours of each day those cars are generating lots of pollution which is getting blown into your city. Just converting traffic into buses won't solve everything if those buses are also getting stuck in jams all day. Streetcars, ferries and trains will generate less pollution while also helping get the traffic moving.

EDIT: Ideally if you can design your city so that all the low/mid wealth sims walk everywhere and only the high wealth sims are driving around pollution from traffic should be at a minimum. Good luck with this task though

Thanks for the tip on traffic! I wasn't sure if traffic would play much of a role in air pollution but it's nice to see it confirmed. That being said though, I'm playing a relatively new city with a population less than 5000 so the traffic right now is moderate at best. However, with that in mind, I did look into my data maps again and had some surprising finds.

 

This is the air pollution map:

 

I do not have any other cities in the region and I cannot stress that enough, this is the only one which makes the data map quite puzzling. As you can see there is a small but heavy patch of pollution near the left side of the map as well as more mild pockets of pollution in an undeveloped area. You can also see some arrows near the top that indicates what direction the wind is blowing. There is no road where the pocket is, nor was there a road from which it came from, as well as any industrial areas or dirty utilities.

 

This is what's confusing/irritating me right now. I don't know what it's caused by but it occasionally occurs over top of my residential and commercial zones causing many sims to fall ill and flood the clinic as well as a general decline in happiness.

 

I'm going to do a couple of experiments to put some theories to test but in the mean time, if anyone can offer up an explanation to what is causing this, it would be much appreciated (the traffic tip definitely was and will be kept in mind for my larger cities).

[cnelson711 1]

I can't decide if it's a bug or a feature.  I think Maxis mentioned you can't just let pollution "blow off the map".  

My theory: if you allow pollution to blow off the map, it increases "regional" air pollution.  High levels of regional pollution show up on every map in the region as random blobs and circles of air pollution appearing in your city.

[SquidInABox 15]

I can't decide if it's a bug or a feature.  I think Maxis mentioned you can't just let pollution "blow off the map".  

My theory: if you allow pollution to blow off the map, it increases "regional" air pollution.  High levels of regional pollution show up on every map in the region as random blobs and circles of air pollution appearing in your city.

I think you may be on to something here. There is both Local Pollution and Regional Pollution. It makes sense that even with only one city in the region generating pollution it will be raising Regional Pollution levels which will manifest with blobs of air pollution being blown randomly onto your map.

[The Canadian Stig 0]

I can't decide if it's a bug or a feature.  I think Maxis mentioned you can't just let pollution "blow off the map".  

My theory: if you allow pollution to blow off the map, it increases "regional" air pollution.  High levels of regional pollution show up on every map in the region as random blobs and circles of air pollution appearing in your city.

I think you may be on to something here. There is both Local Pollution and Regional Pollution. It makes sense that even with only one city in the region generating pollution it will be raising Regional Pollution levels which will manifest with blobs of air pollution being blown randomly onto your map.

This makes a lot of sense, but if this really is the cause, and not just a bug, then I feel it could have been done much better. If the wind is blowing to the north of my city then the regional air pollution should increase to the north of my city and not in the south. Instead, it seems like the game is just increasing the pollution throughout the entire region. This goes against the logic that is implemented within the cities themselves then seeing as how air pollution throughout the city is influenced by the wind direction.

 

That being said, the game could just be more in depth then what I'm reading into. I'm going to claim a number of neighboring cities to determine what their wind directions are. It could just be that the region has a circular wind pattern meaning that the air pollution created in my city could eventually just reach my city again.

[The Canadian Stig 0]

Well, the wind pattern for the region definitely is NOT circular which busts that theory. However I did discover that air pollution won't affect a city until a day/month has passed in game.

[omi_al 0]

if pollution is caused by traffic, i hope they will fix the traffic behavior soon. Apparently even with buses, trains, and cable cars, it still generates lots of gridlock. I even avoid using cable cars cause they sometimes block the intersection causing cars to stop and worsen traffic.

[dan008 2]

unable to get rid of ground pollution and citizens are drinking dirty water, added 2 filtration systems still dirty. 

[cnelson711 1]

unable to get rid of ground pollution and citizens are drinking dirty water, added 2 filtration systems still dirty. 

did you turn off the regular pump?

[Roco45 0]

Yea I think the air pollution mechanic is flawed, I was in a region all by myself, everything was low density and in the corner of my city where the wind was blowing, I plopped down a garbage dump with one incenerator. Withing maybe 10 minutes I checked the air pollution data map to find that my whole city tile was full of air pollution and causing my citizens to get sick. (No message about regional air pollution rising, which is something I see every 5 minutes on populated regions) The wind should of blew the pollution right out of my city without touching my other zones. I also think traffic causing pollution aswell as other cities pollution blowing into yours is a very terrible mechanic since they do not offer us some way to counter it. Like say, researching an air purifier in the Science department of a University, but nope. (Also let me just say that the overall lack of stuff you can research and obtain is appalling) Also I'm pretty sure just having a bunch of high density skyscrapers causes some air pollution. Also on another note, the garbage dump with ground pollution is another thing that they need to work on because it is frustrating since you cannot get your city to 100% recycle and cannot ship your garbage out of the region like some places do in real life.

[Srafty 7]

unable to get rid of ground pollution and citizens are drinking dirty water, added 2 filtration systems still dirty. 

 

Add lost of trees around the pollution source, also make sure the water pump only has filtration pumps... trees will clear any ground pollution relatively fast, they also help with air pollution from what i can tell. do not let pollution blow off the map, try to put a small tree line between the source and map edges - replace trees regularly this will need to be done more often the higher the pollution.

 

generally i just put trees in any spare space i can find, obviously this gets harder once your city grows... 

- keep a tiny bit more room on the outer edge of your map then you need for your infrastructure (around the width of a small road)

- place trees around anything that releases pollutants (leaving a small road space for trees, note all space is never used anyway so try to take advantage of this by deciding where u want that spare space).

 

kind of unrelated but since trees take room,

- when ever you improve land value, in most cases you will need to demolish the buildings and rezone. you only need do this if you are trying to maximize space (running out of room), buildings without enough room will remain $ or $$ even in the highest land values, demolishing them helps to improve room usage as they rebuild. "it may take quiet a few de-zones, re-zones to get the desired result, but in the end it is worth it"