The costs of air monitoring sites, including personnel, benefits, gasoline, telephone and software expenditures, were summed and then divided by the number of sites that Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) currently maintains. The air quality monitoring network is currently undergoing an upgrade of the software and the communications system. Each continuous site will be outfitted with automatic valves that will enable operators to perform quality checks from their desks, decreasing the number of site visits to the stations, thereby decreasing costs. Currently there are 24 continuous monitoring stations that are maintained by DEQ all of which report data to the web page but none of which are outfitted with the automated equipment. As the agency progresses in the implementation of these operational efficiencies, it is expected that costs will decrease.