Posted on 01/24/2015 7:09:05 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
In an effort to improve air quality across Utah during the winter season, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has proposed a seasonal wood burn ban, much to the chagrin of many locals.
The ban would eliminate solid fuel burning in fireplaces and wood/coal stoves from Nov. 1 to March 15, except for homeowners whose homes are heated solely by wood.
The proposal comes after Gov. Gary Herbert requested the the Air Quality Board explore options for improving wintertime air quality along Utah's Wasatch Front and Cache Valley.
The region suffers from winter temperature inversions, which occur when a dense layer of cold air becomes trapped under a layer of warm air.
The warm layer of air acts like a lid, trapping pollutants underneath. The Wasatch Front valleys and their surrounding mountains act like a bowl, keeping this cold air in the valleys.
The snow-covered valley floors reflect rather than absorb the heat from the sun, preventing the normal vertical mixing of warm and cold air.
"Additionally, high pressure sitting over the region during the wintertime results in light winds, that just aren't sufficient for mixing the air," AccuWeather.com Expert Meteorologist Brett Anderson said.
"The inversion just stays trapped."
The longer an inversion lasts, the higher the level of trapped pollution.
According to the DEQ, the areas included in the proposed ban routinely violate the federal health-based standard for particulate matter, and solid fuel burning has been found to be a significant contributor to fine particulate pollution.
Though mandatory burn ban days already exist for this region during wintertime inversions, a full-fledged seasonal ban is opposed by many.
According to Utahns for Responsible Burning, an organization strongly opposed to a seasonal ban: "The Utah Department of Environmental Quality estimates that wood smoke is approximately 5% of this problem. Even if burning is completely banned, it won't solve the valley's brown cloud."
Car exhaust, factory emissions and other pollutants contribute to the region's poor air quality.
The organization believes that the ban punishes citizens who invested in newer, cleaner burning stoves and will be a disincentive for others to upgrade to more environmentally responsible hearth products.
Others say that the cost of using an alternative form of heat is too great.
"I know many families that will be impacted. I know families that will have to choose between food and keeping their families warm," Utah resident Debi Rosenlund Brozovich said.
"No business or industry has ever been asked to reduce pollution by 100 percent."
In an effort to make the ban more affordable to local residents, the DEQ has agreed to subsidize the costs for low-income families. Additionally, it exempts households whose only option for heat is wood burning.
"Homeowners whose homes are heated solely by wood and are registered with DAQ as a sole source residence would be permitted to continue heating with wood," the DEQ said.
On Tuesday, more than 500 people showed up to Brigham City's public hearing. The hearing was one of seven scheduled during the 40-day public comment period, which closes Feb. 9.
Bet they'd burn a Christian or a stack of books at the stake in a HEARTBEAT! ;)
UN Agenda 21 at work to make life impossibly expensive for non-essential personnel.
Morons.
Vermont is full to the brim with Greenies, but fortunately they love their wood stoves. And their guns.
Reading COMPREHENSION anyone.......
Line the idiots up shoot them and then burn them... then put a warning out for the next group of liberal legislative environmental idiots.. your next.
And plaid via Eddi Bauer, LOL!
But people would be allowed to use their fireplaces in the summer. And who needs heat in the winter with all of this global warming. Folks need to move out of the valleys before rising sea levels flood them, anyway. The lowest point in Salt Lake City is less than a mile above the current sea level.
Are you talking about THIS sentence? And how we shouldn’t let this get in the way of a good argument? ;)
“...except for homeowners whose homes are heated solely by wood.”
I hope they have a way to save the massive organ in the Tabernacle. That thing is awesome!
But, I digress...
Sounds like something that would be difficult to enforce.
At some point, enough freedoms are lost that it’s time for another revolution........actually, we have less freedom and more taxes now than the early colonists did when they started what birthed this nation.
Guess what? From the 1700’s well into the 1900’s, everyone heated with either wood or coal......
For now...
We heat with wood but have a natural gas back up. The wood is free from my inlaws land (lots of free firewood)..
Why pay for gas?
The city can stick their head down my chimney, IDK.. I’m gonna burn the near free firewood.
Thank god they have not banned it here. yet.
SnitchLine - 1-888-FIRESNITCH...
If this isn’t a site for a wind farm, I don’t know what is!
If the downdraft, which keeps the ‘pollution’ in the valley, is THAT STRONG, then why not harness it? Just tip the blades in the opposite direction!
Hells Bells! I’ve flown into Mexico City a dozen times - EXACT SAME problem there, but I don’t see any wind farms harvesting all of that downdraft!
Instead of p*ssing off the Kennedy Crime Family with blades that obscure THEIR Ocean View, why not find EVERY valley on the planet that has a downdraft and harvest electricity from there?
But, I’m just an uneducated sap who has NEVER seen how a windmill works...or DOESN’T...on the farm. *SMIRK*
the same cities and counties that have huge waste to energy incinerators seem to be the same ones that don’t want the rabble saving a few bucks thru burning firewood, which is a huge effort in the getting, the splitting, and stacking....
If this is anything like Denver, and odds are it is, the pollution does not come from either car exhaust or wood burning, but gravel laid on streets when it snows. Denver instituted a program to aggressively clean up streets after snow falls, and it has largely fixed Denver’s brown cloud.
Heated solely by wood means nothing. Just a meaningless sop. There probably aren’t three houses in SLC without some sort of heat besides wood. Its a burn ban for 99.9% of the population. And there are people who have heat but burn wood and have a need to do so.
No, this is not over reacting because of one retarded “exemption”.
Why pay for gas?
We had a woodstove and cut our own wood for years. Dirt cheap to operate. But now after a move we have have only gas and pay nearly $500 a month just to stay warm.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.