Poindexter
Minister of Fire
OK.
I read the article. For as deep as it goes (not very), both sides are reasonably well represented.
Lance Roberts and Tammie Wilson are both on (or recent members of) the borough assembly. As borough mayor, Karl Kassel presides over the 9 members of the assembly at borough meetings. Jean Olsen, the veterinarian is a private citizen. Tammie has done a recent stint in the Alaska Legislature, I live outside both her historic borough and legislative districts. I do live inside the regulated burner "rectangle of death."
The link between elevated PM2.5 concentration and cumulative lung damage is statistically very strong. It is, I think, most correct to refer to "the preponderance of evidence." When Roberts and/or Wilson say "unproven" they are technically correct, but overlooking the preponderance of evidence when they do so.
The air quality in Fairbanks does suck, often. Wintertime inversions are bad. One sticky point not covered in the linked article is the EPA is doing nothing, and proposing nothing, to ameliorate summer time air quality when forest fire smoke blows into town.
You know how in the lower 48 forest fire control is all about protecting structures, real property? How many houses are threatened? If we have, again this summer like last summer, a 10k acre fire 30 miles out of town not threatening any structures the forest service does jack-doodle because no structures are threatened, when the wind blows the smoke into town it counts against our EPA measured air quality score, so we are supposed to get our year round air quality scores low enough to meet the benchmark by changing our behavior on the things we can control while the forest fires burn, often all summer, and hurt our annual AQ score. There are lots and lots of otherwise reasonable people very very pissed off about this little detail.
With a gentle pencil, Lance and Tammie are all about property rights, what you do on your land is your business. While I do agree with this in principle, we do have a law up here that you can't run a pipe across the lawn to dump raw sewage from your toilet onto the lawn of your next door neighbor. I think that is a good law.
What we don't have here is a consensus public opinion that wood stove exhaust is more or less the same, though even Lance and Tammie agree we share a less than ideal air shed. Recently the borough passed an ordinance that you don't have to show cause to lodge a complaint. The vote was 8-1, Lance Roberts the only assemblyman opposed - so Tammie Wilson must still be in the state legislature. I think the community would have been better served long term by a class action lawsuit filed by many many people who can't burn wood while the AQ is bad (Stage III) against the borough for not having shut down the few folks with dirty stacks.
What I see with my own eyes driving around Fairbanks and North Pole and the surrounding area is the vast majority, say 99% or even 99.9% or so of wood burners are running clean plumes. I am not an EPA certified Visual Emissions Evaluator, but I have done the course work to take the test to become one. My own opinion, based on personal observation of many many chimneys in the borough is we could significantly improve our wintertime AQ by changing out another 20-30 wood burning appliances. It might or might not be enough to bring us in to EPA compliance, but as usual it only takes those one or two jackholes to ruin it for the rest of us.
The borough AQ ordinance has only been on the books about a year, year and a half now. Mayor Kassel was very very gentle the first winter with enforcement, He issued an edict that anyone found in non-compliance was to be brought to his attention before they were ticketed and he called them, each and every one. Made home visits. Wheedled. Begged. Behaved like a public servant.
He did eventually give the sheriff permission to ticket one of the offenders after several personal home visits. The accused made the front page of the local paper, above the fold, with a list of the dates and times the mayor had visited the home to offer the accused an upgraded wood stove. Still presumed innocent of course, but good luck finding 12 impartial jurors for that one. Pretty sure that one was settled without a court date.
It does gall me that builders with "No Other Adequate Source of Heat", the NOASH permits, get the same tiered verbal warning system ahead of ticketing that supplemental burners like me get. I think anyone committing to heating their home with wood only ought to know what they are doing and surrender all (or all but one) of their verbal warnings before they get ticketed and fined for AQ offenses. Instead, as written, they can basically continue to pollute for the rest of this winter before they get ticketed in late spring.
With four kids of my own, I am all about saving money on utility bills. As a Registered Nurse I think clean air is a good thing. Let's get these 20-30 worst offenders cleaned up and see how much of a problem we have left to deal with.
Don't get me started about natural gas. On the North Slope at the oil wells they are re-injecting trillions and trillions of cf of NG every day. Its a really big number that starts with a 2 and has lots of zeros. "They" could possibly build a NG pipeline beside the existing oil pipeline from the north slope all the way down to Valdez, AK. Then "we" could export NG and crude oil both. But "they" have been talking about since the 1960's and haven't done it yet. Given historic ice data, it makes a lot more sense to wait a few more years, build a liquefaction plant on the north slope, and then use LNG tankers to sail the stuff down to Seattle or Tokyo where it will be worth real money and bypass Fairbanks (and pipeline construction expense) entirely. Unfortunately LNG is coming out of the south Pacific so cheaply that the electricity plant in Anchorage, AK is buying LNG from the Phillipines rather than out of the North America infrastructure at the Seattle terminal. Economic reality is what it is.
M2c anyway.
. ).