Posted on 12/04/2004 8:43:50 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Today is a no-burn day in most of Kern County, and local air pollution control inspectors are using high tech gadgets to seek out violators -- a method some say is against the law because it amounts to an illegal searches of people's homes.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District is using six new infrared heat detectors, called non-contact infrared thermometers, to catch people burning wood in their fireplaces on designated no-burn days. With the devices, pollution control inspectors can be outside a home, point the infrared scanner at a chimney, pull the trigger and get a temperature reading for the fireplace.
And that, said Kern County Public Defender Mark Arnold, is the problem.
"The law is very clear. The use of a thermo-imaging device to search into the interior of someone's house is illegal without a search warrant."
Six people in Kern County were ticketed with the help of the device on the last no-burn day, Nov. 20. They face fines ranging from $50 to $1,000.
Some of the offenders were caught after neighbors called the district's hot line to complain, but others were discovered while inspectors patrolled neighborhoods looking for violators.
Northwest Bakersfield resident Kenneth Gonder was one of them.
Gonder said he was ticketed after a local compliance inspector discovered his dwindling wood fire using the infrared sensor. He said he didn't know it was a no-burn day when he started the fire.
Gonder said the no-burn warning wasn't on the news the previous night and he assumed the fire would be OK.
He said the inspector who ticketed him, Mark Sproat, told him he was driving around scanning houses at random, looking for violators.
Sproat did not return calls Friday.
The inspector also took pictures of the inside of Gonder's house, Gonder said, because when Gonder returned from a walk that evening, he found the man standing in the street taking photos of his living room windows, where Gonder's wife was sitting alone reading.
That's also when the inspector told him about the infrared sensor and the ticket.
The notice of violation Gonder received this week did not mention the pictures, but claims the inspector smelled smoke and that the infrared thermometer had measured the temperature of Gonder's fireplace as 150 degrees.
Gonder said there is no way Sproat could have smelled the fire, as it was almost completely burned out by the time he arrived.
"There was absolutely no smoke coming out of my chimney," Gonder said. "The inspector ... noted that there was no smoke and that it was a really clean-burning fire when he was talking to me."
Gonder also said the inspector admitted to driving around the neighborhood scanning the chimneys with the thermometer, looking for violators.
Anthony Presto, a public education representative for the pollution control district, denied that inspectors are doing sweeps of entire neighborhoods with the infrared scanners, but admitted that photos were occasionally taken to back up an inspector's claim of illegal burning.
"In order to get extra verification that there is a fire going on that is illegal, there's a possibility that pictures could be taken, but I don't know for sure what happened in that instance," Presto said.
Gonder said he feels taking the photos through his windows, even for purposes of evidence, was inappropriate.
Arnold, with the county's public defender's office, said the law might agree, especially in the case of the infrared thermometer.
"It's really no more than a high-tech assault on a man's castle," Arnold said. "It's an invasion of privacy. It's an invasion against one's reasonable expectation of privacy."
Arnold said that in some cases, taking photographs of people's homes in order to prove they were violating the no-burn rule would also be illegal.
"Peering into windows without a warrant is illegal," Arnold said. "Unless the observation is made in plain view in a place where any person would have a lawful right to stand, then they would need a search warrant."
While Sproat was standing on public property -- a public street -- when he took the photos, Arnold said it might still have been illegal because of the shrubberies the Gonders planted in front of their living room window to block the view from the street in an attempt to protect their privacy.
Meanwhile, the pollution control district maintains it is doing nothing wrong.
"It's definitely legal. We wouldn't have it if it wasn't," Presto said.
He said the infrared guns are only used to verify that someone has an illegal fire in his fireplace after some other indication of the violation, such as a phone call from a neighbor or smelling smoke on days when it's too dark or foggy to see the smoke.
The district created the rule enforcing no-burn days in 2003 on the advice of the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to 2003, the no-burn policy was a voluntary measure.
In the two no-burn days the pollution control district enforced last season, 62 people were given warnings but no one was ticketed.
Presto said inspectors would not be giving any warnings this year.
"They considered them to be an education-type program," Presto said of last season's warnings.
"There will be no excuses this year. A great deal of promotion has been done to educate the public on this rule."
Argh. I'm freezing here. Think I'll go build a fire.
The Proper Function Of Government
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"No Burn Days"????? Infrared chimney scanners??????? Neighbors reporting people who have a fire in the their fireplace?????
This must be some sort of parody.
I have to say, though, a neighbor every reported me for that, he damn well better obey every law there is from that day forward.
This is so much bulls**t. Blatant disregard for our constitutional rights on display by these "inspectors"...
However, there is one simple remedy (besides tar, feathers, and a rail) - simply disable your furnace, and you can have a fire in your woodstove\fireplace all you want because it is your primary source of heating for the home. If the furnace doesn't work because it's "broken" or "non-existant", well, they can't do crap to ya...
"He said the infrared guns are only used to verify that someone has an illegal fire in his fireplace after some other indication of the violation, such as a phone call from a neighbor or smelling smoke on days when it's too dark or foggy to see the smoke.
If this is the case, they have legal grounds to apply for a warrant and get around the problem.
This "inspector" is lucky not to have been shot.
Joanne, is that you?
Seriously, what a disgusting article. It's winter for pete's sake. How much pollution could Bakersfield be suffering from? Imo, it's not the threat of poor air quality, it is the latest way for the city of Bakersfield to rake in more money in the form of fines.
This is clearly a case that calls for tar and feathers. The insanity in California has reached plague proportions. It would not surprise me to hear of a fascist bureaucrat ventlated with a .357.
In Bakersfield they call them, "The Fireplace Nazis".
Great tool for us firefighters though.....
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