Free Republic

The first mandatory no-burn alert in the Bay Area resulted in nine residents getting caught for lighting wood fires. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District will send warning letters to the violators of the Spare the Air alert, which was in effect from noon Wednesday to noon Thursday. Repeat offenders can be fined hundreds or thousands of dollars.Six of the nine violators were reported by neighbors, and three were detected by air district inspectors out in the field, said Aaron Richardson, a district spokesman.Regardless of how a violation is reported, an air district inspector must witness the burning to...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Bay Area air quality officials issued the first Spare the Air alert of the winter season today, making it illegal to burn wood, pellets or manufactured fire logs around the region. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District passed a regulation in July banning wood and fire log burning on winter days when weather conditions could lead to poor air quality.

Impatient with the glacial pace of federal regulators on greenhouse gas emissions, the Bay Area air quality district voted last week to assess fees on about 2,500 polluting businesses that they regulate. The fees aren't large - the majority of businesses will pay less than a dollar - and they will mostly fund the district's administrative costs related to climate change, such as doing an emissions inventory for the Bay Area. But the precedent is significant: The district is the first in the nation to impose fees. Its success or failure will be a model for both the state and...

SAN FRANCISCO — The Bay Area's air pollution board today became the first in the United States to charge businesses fees for the global warming gases they emit. The fees, ranging from $180,000 a year for a large oil refinery to $1 annually for a service station, would fund district efforts to calculate, study and control carbon dioxide, methane and other warming gases. Representatives of oil refineries and several business groups opposed the fee, saying it would duplicate and interfere with the state's landmark law to control global warming gases statewide. Air board administrators and board members said their efforts...