As we’ve have seen in our discussions on energy, there are few things that residents of the borough can do to help offset the extremely high costs that we are facing each winter. One thing has emerged over the last couple of years; supplementing our residential and commercial heat with wood.
Heating with wood has saved many citizens thousands of dollars from their annual fuel bills. Some have reported savings as high as 60%. And the sudden increase in outdoor boilers and hydronic heaters has lead to some reports of poor air quality.
In an effort to try to comply with the EPA Clean Air Act, the borough created a plan that would paint wood smoke PM2.5 as one of the primary culprits of our air violations. This would make sense if they were counting the wood smoke generated by the myriad of forest fires we have suffered over the last decade, but as luck would have it, those poor air quality days are excused as ‘acts of nature’. In fact according to analysis by the State Dept of Environmental Conservation the main contributor to poor air quality days in the winter (where we failed attainment) is not wood smoke particulates, but particulates with a sulfate content (read diesel fuel/heating oil).
So it would seem that the borough administration is using the ancient tactic of ‘divide and conquer’. Since wood stove users (who use wood primarily) account for only %10 of residents, they would be able to restrict their use with less resistance. Then after there is a lack of measureable results from the restrictions on wood stoves, they would go after the primary violators; oil fired heating units.
The excuse would be: “well, wood stove users have to follow our mandates, now so do you.”
With our energy challenges, we should not be eliminating one of the oldest and most renewable form of heating for our homes. We need to be truly honest about what is causing our particulate problem, and address the science behind the perceived hazard.
