Air, Wood, BBQ: USA EPA and Wood Burning Stove Ban

EPA Bans Most Wood-Burning Stoves

October 2, 2013
Written by: Tara Dodrill Politics

Wood-burning stoves offer warmth and enhance off-grid living options during cold weather months, but the tried-and-true heating devices now are under attack by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA has banned the production and sale of the types of stoves used by about 80 percent of those with such stoves. The regulations limit the amount of “airborne fine-particle matter” to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The current EPA regulations allow for 15 micrograms in the same amount of air space.

Most of the wood stoves currently nestled inside cabins and homes from coast-to-coast don’t meet the new environmental standard. The EPA launched a “Burn Wise” website to help convince the public that the new regulations were needed.

Trading in an old stove for a newer stove isn’t allowed.

“Replacing an older stove with a cleaner-burning stove will not improve air quality if the older stove is reused somewhere else,” the website says. “For this reason, wood stove change out programs usually require older stoves to be destroyed and recycled as scrap metal, or rendered inoperable.”

In some areas of the country, local governments have gone further than the EPA and banned not just the sale of such stoves, but the usage of old stoves – and even the usage of fireplaces. That means that even if you still have a stove or a fireplace, you can’t burn it for fear of a fine. Puget Sound, Washington, is one such location.

Burn Wise is a partnership program associated with the EPA that is tasked with emphasizing the “importance of burning the right wood, the right way, in the right stove.” Information shared on the website operated by the federal government also states that both state and local agencies are pursuing ways to improve air quality that relate to wood-burning stoves.

The overall goal of the EPA Burn Wise program is to educate both local governmental agencies and citizens about the need for more “cleaner-burning” in the marketplace. Three of the most recent highlighted articles and webinars on the EPA Burn Wise website include details about a voluntary wood burning fireplace program, strategies for reducing residential wood some in state, tribal, and local communities, and a recording entitled, “Reducing Residential Wood Some: Is it Worth it?”

The EPA also has compiled a list of “approved” stoves.

According to a Washington Times review of the wood stove ban, the most dangerous aspect of the EPA proposed guidelines is the one-size-fits-all approach to the perceived problem. The same wood burning stove rules would apply to both heavily air-pollution laden major cities and far cleaner rural regions with extremely cooler temperatures. Families living in Alaska, or off the grid in wilderness area in the West, will most likely have extreme difficulty remaining in their cold, secluded homes if the EPA wood stove rules are approved.

The Times further said that wood burning stoves put less airborne fine-particle manner in the air than is present from secondhand some in a closed vehicle. When an individual smokes inside a car with the windows up, passengers are reportedly exposed to approximately 4,000 micrograms of soot per cubic meter.

Wrote the Times’ editorial board:

“Alaska’s 663,000 square miles is mostly forested, offering residents an abundant source of affordable firewood. When county officials floated a plan to regulate the burning of wood, residents were understandably inflamed. ‘Everybody wants clean air. We just have to make sure that we can also heat our homes,’ state Rep. Tammie Wilson told the Associated Press. Rather than fret over EPA’s computer-model-based warning about the dangers of inhaling soot from wood smoke, residents have more pressing concerns on their minds such as the immediate risk of freezing when the mercury plunges.”

Do you support the EPA’s wood stove ban?
– offthegridnews.com/2013/10/02/epa-bans-most-wood-burning-stoves/

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The EPA Takes an Ax to Self-Sufficiency: Most Wood Burning Stoves Will Soon Be Illegal

September 28, 2013
Daisy Luther

When you think of that little dream homestead in the woods, what does it include? Probably a well and septic system, a little stream bubbling nearby, a chicken coop, a sunroom for winter growing, and a cozy fire to curl up next to.

When my daughter and I spent a year living in a cabin in the Northwoods of Canada, our wood stove was our lifeline. It was the only source of heat in a place that reached -42 degrees. It was the only way we could cook when our power went out during snow and ice storms (as it did frequently). It was the cozy center of our home, and we survived for an entire frigid winter for less than $800. After that experience I vowed never to live in a home without a wood stove.

If the EPA has its way, however, heating your home self-sufficiently with wood could soon become illegal – or at the very least, insanely expensive.

Off Grid Survival reports:
Shortly after the re-election of President Obama, the agency announced new radical environmental regulations that threaten to affect people who live off the grid. The EPA’s new environmental regulations reduce the amount of airborne fine-particle matter from 15 micrograms to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
This means that most wood burning stoves would now fall into a class that would deemed unacceptable under these new draconian measures. The EPA has even launched a nifty new website called Burn Wise to try to sway public opinion.
On their site, while trying to convince people to get rid of their old stoves and buy the new EPA-certified stoves, they state that these older stove must be scrapped and cannot be resold.
From the EPA Site:
The local air pollution agency says I can’t sell my old wood stove to help pay for an EPA-certified wood stove. Why is that?
Replacing an older stove with a cleaner-burning stove will not improve air quality if the older stove is reused somewhere else. For this reason, wood stove change out programs usually require older stoves to be destroyed and recycled as scrap metal, or rendered inoperable. (source)

One of the easiest ways for the government to force this issue is through homeowner’s insurance policies. If you have a mortgage, you have absolutely no option but to carry homeowner’s insurance. Even if you own you homestead outright, most people consider insuring their homes and property to be a vital safety net. When your policy comes up for annual renewal, the insurance company can require an inspection of your home. At that time, compliance can easily be forced by either charging insanely high rates or through the cancellation of the policies of those who have “outdated” wood stoves.

An Attack on Self-Sufficient Living

The ability to heat your home off-grid is a major part of most preparedness plans. Heating with wood is the number one way to do this. Much like our food supplies, the ability to keep ourselves warm and healthy and the ability to cook without being connected to the grid are vital to our freedom.

Those of us who live this lifestyle are constantly targeted. In many places it’s illegal to collect rainwater. Growing food in your front yard instead of flowers is all but outlawed. Sellers of raw milk have their farms raided by SWAT teams as though they’re running a meth lab instead of a dairy. We are being Codex Alimentarius-ed and Agenda 21-ed right into slavery and the government and its agencies try to make it appear that they are “saving” us.

?We, the self-sufficient, by our very nature, are a threat to this insidiously spreading control. Our self-sufficiency means that we won’t be forced to be subjugated, tagged, chipped, and inventoried like our less prepared friends and neighbors. We won’t have to cave in order to survive. We can eat, stay warm, and stay off the radar. And this is a threat because we can withstand the assaults on our freedom. We don’t need the government’s benevolence to survive. Those of us who don’t need the government are the last hold-outs of liberty in a country that has strayed far from it’s freedom-loving origins.

The “Credibility” of the EPA

Don’t be fooled by environmental friendliness or the warm and fuzzy green words. The EPA is just another tool of subjugation. Their stamp of approval carries the same “credibility” as that of USDA or FDA approval. The Environmental Protection Agency, that bastion of clean air and fertile land, wants you to believe that they are taking steps to save us all.

You know, the same folks who upped the legal levels of glyphosate for their friends at Monsanto, even though the herbicide has been proven to cause toxicity and death. The same agency that responded quickly when radiation from the Fukushima disaster reached dangerous levels on the shores of California by closing down 8 of their 18 radiation-testing facilities in California and increasing the “safe amounts” of radiation that we can absorb.

The EPA (or as I like to call it, the Environmental Deception Agency) tends to find things to be highly threatening to the environment only when those things allow us to be non-reliant on big business.

One controversy after another can be attributed to the EPA, an agency charged with protecting the air we breathe, the soil in which we grow our food and the water that we drink. At the bottom of each of those controversies can be found ties to the conspiracies of the big businesses that really run the country. Decisions are being auctioned off to industry lobbyists with the most money and influence.

Environmental protection is only the rule of thumb if it goes along with Agenda 21 – the EPA is all over the green agenda in cases that benefit the redistribution of wealth, but the agency completely ignores blatant crimes against the earth if it involves fracking for the benefit of a natural gas company or poisoning the soil and groundwater for the benefit of a biotech monolith.
– activistpost.com/2013/09/the-epa-takes-ax-to-self-sufficiency.html

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Rep. Massie Investigates EPA Wood Stove Regulations in Science Committee
by Rep Thomas Massie
First the administration went after coal, now it’s coming after wood heat? On my farm, wood is an abundant, renewable, (carbon neutral!) energy source that keeps us warm in the winter and teaches my children the value of hard work. And we burn it responsibly. Federal regulation of wood burning is misguided. I have seen cases where home owners abuse the property rights of their neighbors by burning wood in a way that produces copious amounts of smoke. But these disputes should be left up to states, and ideally, the states should leave it up to the counties and cities, because a one-size-fits-all approach to wood burning is ridiculous. As the price of coal fired electricity goes up due to the President’s promise to bankrupt the coal industry, wood heat is a viable alternative for some individuals who are willing to split wood instead of watching TV. I think this administration would rather see people turn to the government for public assistance with their heating bills.
Watch the video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N88Grg2iV4

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Don’t Exhale: EPA Expected to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Dangerous Pollutant

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the next few weeks to declare that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are pollutants, a move that would require the federal government to regulate them — even without legislation.

August 28, 2009

Don’t exhale.

That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases dangerous pollutants, a move — expected in the next couple weeks — that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions.

But some skeptics say regulating carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, may be a difficult task, especially since people emit carbon dioxide with every breath.

“The EPA doesn’t have the manpower to implement the regulations the way they would have to be,” said David Kreutzer, senior policy analyst in energy economics and climate change at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Kreutzer said new regulations would trigger a flood of lawsuits, would create massive paperwork and the EPA should have no reasonable expectation that people would comply.

In April, the EPA released its proposed finding that man-made pollution is a cause of global warming, triggering a 60-day comment period before the agency issues a final decision.

The finding was prompted by a Supreme Court ruling two years ago that said greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act and must be regulated if found to be a human health danger.

An EPA spokesman told FOXNews.com that no date has been set for a final ruling.

“The EPA received over 300,000 comments on the proposal and is currently reviewing these comments in preparing the final rule,” the agency said in a statement.

Congressional aides, however, say the EPA likely will issue its final ruling next month when Congress reconvenes and its first proposal will be to blame auto vehicles for the emissions.

That’s just the start, however. Aides say later rules will extend to other sources and require a permit from the EPA to build anything that emits more than 25,000 tons of these pollutants. That could include schools, nursing homes or a Walmart.

In addition to carbon dioxide, the EPA said five other emissions are believed to cause warming when they concentrate in the atmosphere: methane, which is emitted by gassy cows as well as steam boilers; nitrous oxide, found in cooking sprays and used as anesthesia by dentists, better known as laughing gas; hydrofluorocarbons, which are used in refrigerators and aerosols; perfluorocarbons, a gas permeated by fire extinguishers, refrigerators and high end ski waxes; and sulfur hexafluoride, more commonly known for its use in circuit breakers, switchgear and other electrical equipment.

While the EPA follows its path, a climate change bill now working its way through Congress would also impose the first legislative limits on greenhouse gases, eventually leading to an 80 percent reduction by mid-century by putting a price on each ton of climate-altering pollution.

President Obama has said he prefers that Congress act to pass the legislation rather than address climate change through administrative action. He said he wants a bill that utilizes market-based solutions to reduce carbon pollution and transition to a clean energy economy that creates millions of green jobs. The EPA is unable to use market solutions and lacks the authority to tax.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll says 55 percent of Americans approve of the way Obama is dealing with energy issues, including his plan to limit greenhouse gases with the climate change legislation, while 30 percent disapprove. By a somewhat narrower majority — 52 percent to 43 percent — Americans back a system that would set a ceiling for greenhouse gas emissions and would allow companies to buy and sell permits to emit the gases.

“Most Americans would strongly support the president’s and the bipartisan commitment to comprehensive legislation that addresses our dangerous addiction to foreign oil and create new jobs and addresses the climate crisis,” said Vickie Patton, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Patton added that there’s a “misinformation campaign designed to divide Americans instead of bringing Americans together to afford solutions.”

Senate Democrats want legislation passed before talks in Denmark in December on a new global treaty to reduce heat-trapping gases.

But the legislation, known by opponents as “cap and trade,” may be in trouble. In June, the House narrowly passed its version of the bill 219-212 after months of negotiations that led to last-minute deals and significant concessions to win the votes of moderate Democrats from industrial and agricultural states concerned about the costs that would be imposed on businesses in their districts.

Further compromises will be needed for the bill to pass the Senate, which has tried and failed before to pass legislation to curb greenhouse gases.

A GOP Senate aide told FOXNews.com that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will introduce a climate change bill on the same day senators return from summer break.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has set a deadline to have all committees working on climate change finish by the end of September, the aide said. But it’s unclear whether Democrats are still pushing for a vote before December after the public backlash to Democratic-sponsored health care reforms.

“We’re starting to see hints that is no longer a viable option,” the aide said, “especially given the number of Democrats who have expressed concern about cap and trade.”

Kreutzer said he believes the EPA decision is a tool being used by the Obama administration to pressure the Senate to pass the legislation.

“None of this is surprising,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who want to use the bogeyman of EPA regulation to force people into the cap-and-trade bill. … They don’t want to give up that lever.”

Kreutzer called EPA regulation a “ransom” for climate change legislation.

“It’s a stone axe to go after something where you need a scalpel,” he said.

He suggested a simple solution would be for Congress to pass a one-line bill that declares carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. But it’s an unlikely solution.