Posted on 12/03/2007 7:38:12 AM PST by SmithL
Livermore resident Bruce Griffing regards a proposal to ban wood fires on bad air nights in the Bay Area as a government intrusion into his hearth and home
"I don't want some fireplace Nazis telling me I can't burn," he said.
Tom Foley, who has asthma, yearns for a ban to spare him from a neighbor's fireplace smoke that leaves him coughing and choking.
"When I come home from work at night, it's like walking into a cloud of smoke," the Redwood City resident said. "What about my right to breathe clean air?"
A proposal to regulate indoor wood fires in the Bay Area for the first time has put the region's air pollution agency in a hot spot: balancing public health with public desire to enjoy warm, cozy fires
After months of talks and seven public workshops, air pollution board members and administrators say they will look into revising, but not dropping, the proposed rule.
A new round of public meetings will be scheduled in three months or so by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
"We may put the damper on some aspects of the plan," said Mark Ross, a Martinez city councilman who leads the 22-member air board, "but this is a public health problem we cannot ignore. Wood smoke is dangerous, and we have to do something about it."
Wood smoke in winter accounts for as much as a third of the region's fine particle air pollution, the district estimates. The soot can irritate healthy people and harm children, the elderly and those with lung and Advertisement heart problems.
Several air board members have said they favor some form of a ban on burning wood fires in fireplaces and stoves on the 20 to 30 nights a year when particles are projected to create unhealthful air.
Ross said last week that he and other board members would be willing to consider a staged approach to the ban, like one Sacramento enacted last month.
Under this approach, fires on moderately dirty air nights would be banned in fireplaces and old stoves, but not in low-emission EPA-certified stoves, fire inserts or fire boxes.
On dirtier nights, all wood burning would be banned.
Representatives of the fire appliance and heating industry say the two-tier approach gives homeowners an incentive to switch to cleaner burning devices.
Or, they say, homeowners could switch to gas-heated ceramic logs, which are common in new homes.
"Some people are going to want to burn no matter what. It goes back to the cavemen. It makes sense to give them an incentive to burn cleaner," said Greg Harris, owner and operator of Buck Stove, Spa and Fan Center in Walnut Creek.
Not everyone supports the two-tier no-burn system.
"It will be harder to enforce and harder to understand," said Jenny Bard, a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association of California.
Besides, she said, even low-emission stoves and fireplaces emit some fine particles.
The San Joaquin Valley air district bans all wood-burning devices -- low emission or not -- on its no-burn nights, Bard noted.
Ross and fellow air board member Gayle Uilkema, a Contra Costa County supervisor, said they want to look closely at how the smoke rule would be enforced in the Bay Area.
Some critics said the proposal encourages neighbors to snitch on illegal burners.
How else, they ask, could an air district with 70 inspectors responsible for thousands of pollution sources take on the extra duties of watching over 1.7 million fireplaces and stoves in the region?
To help the inspectors, Ross said the district is looking into the feasibility of using detection devices to pick up on smoke in valleys where soot is trapped on cold nights.
"In some places, the problem is localized to certain valleys," he said.
During the air district's seven public workshops, nearly 190 people took part, either in person or via the Internet.
Critics said the health risk from smoke is not large enough to justify telling people to give up the cozy ambiance of fires.
"I try not to burn on Spare the Air nights, but I don't like someone telling me not to burn," said Griffing, the Livermore resident.
Some critics also grumbled that a ban would deprive them of chances to burn fires to pare their heating bills.
Families without access to natural gas for heating homes would be exempt from the bans.
In the other camp, many people argued that a smoke rule is long overdue to protect the public from elevated health risks of getting or aggravating lung and heart problems.
"I start choking some nights when people light fires," said Albert Rothman, an 83-year-old Livermore resident who likes to hike outdoors but has asthma.
Foley, the Redwood city resident, said the smoke rule would help him because it has a year-round ban on releasing thick dirty smoke from unseasoned wood.
"One neighbor burns constantly eight months a year. Going in my yard is like standing in front of a smoky barbecue," Foley said.
He said he suspects the smoke contributed to the lung cancer death of his 7-year-old terrier two years ago.
"No one can help me," Foley said. "The city wasn't interested. The air district said all they could do was provide an educational pamphlet for my neighbor to read about clean burning."
For more information, visit http://www.baaqmd.gov.
Source: Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
Colorado already has banned fireplaces. Poor Santa, now he must use the HVAC vents!.............
OMG. Forced Re-education Camp
Firewood sales are one of the few means of economically thinning these forests. Even without fire, if we don't thin, we'll get more mold spores in the air which are a vastly more powerful allergen than smoke.
No one quantifies these relationships, but the "air quality authorities" best remember that there's no such thing as a free lunch, or "naturally clean air."
It's co-located with your right to freeze your nads off in the pristine wilderness of Alaska. The air is awesome but the commute can be brutal.
ROFL! Stupid libs are going to be bit in the ass by their own liberalism.
When I was a small child, wood and coal was what everybody used for heat in the winter and cooking all year round. I love the smell of wood burning from a stove ore fireplace on cold mornings......
The air Q enforcement nazis don’t have the balls to enforce this is the lousy neighborhoods and Hispanic barrio type neighborhoods. But the Wilde middle class will bear the brunt of such enforcement captivities. Just wait ‘till the ratting out begins
Some years yes, once in a while you get a year with over six and a half million acres of forest fires.
and i like my gas fireplaces, they are easier and more convenient, but I would switch back to woodburning in a heartbeat if I could. There is something comforting about the sounds/smell of a woodfire.
I love being able to warm up my home to 72 degrees or higher on cold winter nights. I simply could not afford burning home heating oil to maintain that temp. I figre I will save about $2,000 this year burning wood due to the high costs of heating oil - that green money savings smells great.
Dude, if you don't like Nazis, you chose the wrong place to live.
Since they won’t allow powerplants or Infrastructure improvements, what do they intend to use for heat on cold nights when they run out of power?
These people don’t actually THINK much, do they?
Wanna buy some wood?
Seriously, I’ve got a whole bunch of cords of oak seasoning right now. And last night with my power off, they would have had to pry my fireplace poker from my cold, dead fingers.
Heh.
Nanny State Ping...............
There's no such thing. Of either a right, or "clean" air. Never has been, never will be.
I simply don't believe this guy.
I give my excess to my congregation. They sell it.
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