Posted on 11/12/2003 3:46:36 PM PST by chance33_98
Air District Clarifies New Fireplace Rules
Rule Violators Could Be Fined
POSTED: 11:35 PM PST November 10, 2003 UPDATED: 11:19 AM PST November 11, 2003
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- New fireplace regulations that went into effect Nov. 1 mean before people light a log in their fireplace, residents will need to know if it's been declared a "no burn night."
Dale Karnes uses his wood burning fireplace solely to heat the room where he and his wife spend most of their time.
"We need the heat. It's not because our age or anything, this room is like a tomb in the wintertime. It's cold," Karnes said.
However, if they use their fireplace for heat on a "no burn night," they could face a fine because it's not their sole heating source.
"It is hooked onto the main heat, but it's so far away. I mean it's probably a good 40 feet from that exchange to the unit," Karnes said.
The No. 1 question being asked about the "no burn nights" is who is exempt from the no burn rules.
One point the San Joaquin Valley Air District wants people to know is that pellets and manufactured fire logs are not exempt from the rules.
"If wood burning is your soul source of heat and you don't have another heating device built into the home then you are exempt. We are going to allow questions about that because people aren't sure if they qualify or not," said Kelly Malay of the San Joaquin Valley Air District.
Malay said there is no "permit" application -- residents will either be exempt, or not.
"The best answer is call us and we'll talk about it and find out because there are some gray areas that we need to know all the details about," Malay said.
The Air District will enforce the no burn nights with both random patrols and through complaints that are called in.
"If you are caught violating the rule the fine can be between $50 and $1,000. The $1,000 case would obviously be someone who has violated the rule repeatedly," Malay said.
The "no burn nights" do not apply to residents with natural gas or propane fireplaces.
Call (800) SMOG-INFO for the daily no burn status and if you have any questions about the no burn rules, call the Air District at 326-6900.
Basically, yes.
That's what it's come down to: the quality-of-life ship is sinking, and it's every man for himself.
It's all we smart ones can do to salvage what we can for ourselves, while the majority try to save their way of life by destroying it in their race to the bottom.
Unfortunately, there are already no good places left to live that have not already been ruined by a population too large to be conducive to a high quality of life.
And the second-best places will also succumb within ten to fifteen years if LEGAL immigration is not severely curtailed.
(By the way: Is there any place in the country where burning autumn leaves is still allowed?)
Just another piece of heavy equipment for the great Highway to Utopia construction project.
Never you mind, it's for our own good, we just don't realize it yet...
We need to outlaw wood; the smoke when it is burned contains over 200 chemicals, 1/4 of them toxic and many carcinogenic.
We non-wood burners have rights and we outnumber you.
Not at the 1,300°F temperatures of my catalytic converter, nor with the twelve miles of distance and 1200' of altitude I have for dispersion. You and your majority don't have a beef with my stove.
Toxicity is a matter of dosage, but then, you don't care about that when you finally think you can vent your frustrations. The people of Los Angeles just got a pretty nasty dose of the consequences of your kind of thinking.
We non-wood burners have rights and we outnumber you.
Oh, lookie there! A democratic claim. Well, last time I read the Constitution, we live in a republic. That means I have property rights that say that you don't have the right to mandate processes that stupidly destroy my forest without paying for it. If you want me not to use natural processes to manage my forest, you'll have to pay for the substitutes or suffer the same fate as the people of LA do now. Those are laws of physics and economics that don't give a hang about your fantasy "rights." Your comment is collectivism worthy of a Soviet apparatchik.
You flunked again "professor."
I don't know about burning leaves, (remember the smell?) In Alabama when areas are cleared, they burn the debris. They also replant after the construction, they are not as they are stereotyped. An RV park owner there has a campfire each night for the guest campers. In Michigan, each campsite has a fire pit, on weekend nights, most are ablaze.
I find in my gypsy travels that there are still many out of the way places where society is good and over population of the urban areas is not too bad. But the ominous trend is still there. the places left are rural, but housing is making inroads. Immigration for the purpose of saving the social security system is driving into all areas. (MALDEF has told the mexicans to head for the heartland, and they are.)
I believe optimistically, that each generation will find a satisfactory quality of life, but each may look at the previous generation with envy.
Abbey also wrote the Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire. In those novels, he promotes the battle between the modified and the natural. Arthur Clark wrote "The City and the Stars" to relate the dynamics of a future society living in the city and a rebel society who stays in the rural area. While I worked, I lived in the urban area, now as a retiree, I seek out the rural. I guess the battle will continue in our generation.
Oh yeah.
I also remember the steamy gray smoke everywhere.
Beautiful.
Falls not fall without it.
No, it's just that the enviros want us all dead so thay can have the planet for themselves.
I hope you weren't directing this to me. My property was abandoned as an apple orchard 75 years ago. When I bought it, it was covered with French broom, eucalyptus, acacia, rotting oaks, and impacted second growth redwood. It was a massive fire hazard. Those exotics are ALL gone. I have thinned almost all of my acreage along with a buffer on my neighbor's property. It has taken twelve years of brutal work. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars correcting drainage problems due to crappy county roads and stupid tilling practices on the part of the farmer. I spend over a thousand hours a year weeding. I cliimb and top redwood and crappy fir trees. Will you do that? While you were writing that post I was mulching with chopped oak tops (no seed) on a 60% slope after planting iris macrosiphon, sword ferns, coastal wood ferns, hairy honeysuckle, native blackberry, goldback ferns, epilobium, and monkeyflower.
I have published a book containing economic analyses of the very process of rural suburbanization of timberland extending over thirty years on an inflation adjusted, opportunity cost basis. Don't lecture me about that phenomenon.
I live in the city still but watch with amusement when folks flee to the country. They complain about the cow smell next door. One guy in a new suburb here called the fire department when a neighbor burned leaves. Firefighters explained that's allowed out in the county.
Some of us aging yuppies know what we are doing. Nature isn't going to get better on its own. It takes intimate knowledge of the land. It takes immediate access on an almost daily basis to control some weeds. It costs a bundle. So if somebody isn't going to live on these abandoned farmlands, who the hell is going to fix this mess?
Absent immigration, America's population growth would stabilize at near-replacement levels.
Now you are taking a page from another good book on the subject of the environmental impact of growth. The Skeptical Environmentalist. (Bjorn Lomborg) His work shows that cultures reach a stablization level of growth when they reach a certain level of wealth, a level he predicts the world will reach within the next century.
I do not subscribe to the gloom and doom of "The Population Bomb" Although in my youth I joined Erlich's movement as well as the Sierra Club. The reason I do not subscribe is more or less Ayn Randian, I believe we have enough genius to solve our problems and enough land to spare for those who need more elbow room. (Yes, I mean it there is a huge amount of land in the US that is still very open and rural.)
As far as immigration is concerned, I would have at least a 5 year moritorium and I would close the border to foot traffic too. (The illegal kind) I would do this not so much to protect the environment, but to force the assimilation of the immigrants we have and keep our culture. Without that I believe losing the environment will soon follow. Anybody see the environment in Mexico? There is no doubt that immigration puts a strain on our environment and the Sierra Club has their head in a dark place if they don't see it.
As to the indians, (I am part) I believe our culture to be superior to theirs too, although I wish cooler heads could have prevailed and the land divided without bloodshed. I do believe that the indians turned towards terrorism and gave their enemies the justification to do what they wanted to do anyway, Move them off the land. (A different discussion I am sure.)
Which is why absent immigration, U.S. population growth would stabilize.
I believe we have enough genius
We have the potential for as much genius as we would ever need among the current population.
The trick to having geniuses around is to provide an experience of life that nurtures and inspires the genius latent in many men.
History shows that out of relatively small populations great concentrations of genius can arise.
America's founding fathers furnish one example: The very small population of Colonial America furnished those men (likely in good part precisely because the population was small and the continent so large).
Small Hungary contributed an unusually large percentage of early atomic scientists.
Renaissance Florence gave the world many geniuses, also born from a tiny population within the span of a generation.
Time and again we see this flowering of genius seemingly all out of proportion to the size of the population that spawns it.
If you need more genius, you set the stage for it, and it will arise.
America's founding fathers were inspired to their genius and love of liberty by their experience of living so near to wilderness.
The environment brings out the genius in men.
I believe we have enough . . . land to spare for those who need more elbow room.
No we do not.
The very best places are all filled and then some.
I for one, have no use for any land that has not the seacoast on one side and forests, meadows, and mountains on the other.
And apparently Americans feel that way too, because the coastal areas of America are packed to the gills with people, and still they crowd in more.
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