You can file your testimony on the topic here. For background the DEC here in NY is planning regulations that would force most existing stoves to be taken out of service whether they are bothering anybody or not. No other state has put in place such restrictive rules, although several have regulated stack height and siting.
A few bad apples shouldn't cause people like us who sited our stove with great care and maintain it well to have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to heat our home. At this point should OWFs be banned not only would we be forced to abandon a ten-thousand dollar stove, but we would also have to purchase a new indoor furnace as ours is defunct.
Below is the testimony I submitted via the form linked to above.
Thousands of rural New Yorkers rely on outdoor wood stoves for safe, economical heat from a renewable resource, which does not depend on fossil fuels. Our own family turned to an outdoor device when we could no longer afford to heat our home with heating oil. One year alone we spent over three thousand dollars on heating fuel and that was before the price ongoing price spike. I estimate that it would now cost us at least five thousand dollars as we have an old Victorian farm house that is nearly impossible to heat. At this point our only cost to stay warm in the winter is a little electricity and some chain saw chains and gas, as we have our own wood source. It is our only source of hot water in our home as well...year round.
I am afraid we would suffer greatly without it. We run a dairy farm and our income has been horribly curtailed by low milk prices. Perhaps we would even have to sell our farm and move to a warmer climate if we could no longer heat with wood. I will not use an indoor wood device because of the danger of a house fire.
Strong consideration should also be given to the Deep Water Horizon oil spill when comparing the environmental impact of OWFs.
I can't imagine how many wood stoves would have to burn for centuries to have such an immense negative impact on the environment.
Please allow us to continue to use our own resources to heat our homes and to heat our water even in the summer.
Thanks
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9 comments:
Well said.
Seems weird when 40 miles away from here, a company is building a biomass power plant specifically to burn wood from surrounding pine plantations.
They are considering here the banning of woodstoves altogether inside or out. And like in FC's comment, large companies can do what they want. Coal is shipped in and burned for electricity because there is a big push to take the hydroelectric dams out to save the salmon. The coal fired plant is next to a very large dairy, and the pollution from the coal plant is being blamed on the dairy. The powers that be have no sense at all.
Your testimony is well put, I hope they pay attention.
But your not supporting the Gas Companies!!
They cannot have that!
It is all about the money and by having a woodstove and heating with that you are not paying some big assed power company and therefore they are not paying taxes to the big assed government.
Time we voted Freedom back into our lives!! Or take it back somehow!!
From NYS DEC's Regulatory Impact Statement Summary 6 NYCRR 247, Outdoor Wood Boilers: http://www.dec.ny.gov/regulations/64480.html.
"During the winter months, the Department's regional offices receive numerous complaints regarding smoke from OWBs. Some complaints are filed during the summer months as well since some OWBs are used to heat swimming pools and provide hot water for the residences they serve."
Complainants about this kind of thing, I have found, are usually a minority of people who complain repeatedly. It is wasteful to promulgate a statewide law to address the concerns of a very few malcontents . . . particularly without clearer justification of the need for such a law.
I want to see, as justification for the proposed law, a cost comparison of what DEC spends answering complaints versus the costs of enforcement of the proposed law.
The provisions of the proposed 6 NYCRR 247, Outdoor Wood Boilers would seem to be better addressed by local municipal law, and already have been, as illustrated here: http://www.generalcode.com/Samples/06Spr_1.html.
In addition to the cost comparison noted above, I want to see documentation of how this proposed law improves on the New York State Uniform Fire Protection and Code, and why that Code should not be amended rather than having a whole new law under DEC rather than DOS.
And yes, I will be sending this message to Senator Aubertine. Thank you for the heads up on this.
FC, to me it is a crime. The DEC is using incorrect figures to excuse this property taking. I talked to a representative of a company in the Midwest that pointed out to me that they compared apples to watermelons so to speak, making the stoves seem 80 times as bad polluters as they actually are. It is typical of a state that is mostly rural but legislated by city interests
Nita, that is appalling. They need to turn their attention to serious polluters, which are already under unenforced regulations...and get the inspectors to do their jobs, as they so blatantly didn't in the Deep Water Horizon spill.
Madmedic, well said. This is so frustrating. Whenever we find a way to become more self sufficient they find another way to regulate it. You can't even sell an egg legally these days.
June, thank you for your well thought out comment. I am sure there are cases where complaints are legitimate, but so many people who don't have a dog in this fight have strong and much expressed opinions on it. We spent week testing wind patterns before we sited our stove...thanks for taking time to send your testimony!
Some complaints are legitimate.
Absolutely.
But you know as well as I do that people move from densely populated areas into the wide open country air and then complain about the smell of cow and horse s*it on the wind. >:-(
June, you betcha! We were once surrounded by small farms...then a few years ago the farmers died, the land was sold and development moved in. We are now surrounded...the development to the east of us comes closer to the edge of our fields every year. I shudder every time I hear the booming and banging of another house being started...how long before somebody who used to live in Albany starts complaining about the stove or the manure or the noise? I am trying to get the guys to plant a triple row of Norway spruce along our east border but they don't see the need yet.
Former Albanians are bad, but wait'll y'get former Long Islanders...!!!!
June, they are already here, I fear. Oldest daughter took an off farm job in a local convenience store and they come in and maker her life miserable. It as if they enjoy being rude and unkind!
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