It seems that even wood isn’t green or renewable enough anymore.
The EPA has recently banned the production and sale of 80 percent of
America’s current wood-burning stoves, the oldest heating method known to
mankind and mainstay of rural homes and many of our nation’s poorest residents.
The agency’s stringent one-size-fits-all rules apply equally to heavily
air-polluted cities and far cleaner plus typically colder off-grid wilderness
areas such as large regions of Alaska and the American West.
While EPA’s most recent regulations aren’t altogether
new, their impacts will nonetheless be severe. Whereas restrictions had previously
banned wood-burning stoves that didn’t limit fine airborne particulate emissions
to 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air, the change will impose a maximum 12
microgram limit. To put this amount in context, EPA estimates that secondhand
tobacco smoke in a closed car can expose a person to 3,000–4,000 micrograms
of particulates per cubic meter.
Most wood stoves that warm cabin and home residents from
coast-to-coast can’t meet that standard. Older stoves that don’t cannot be
traded in for updated types, but instead must be rendered inoperable,
destroyed, or recycled as scrap metal.
The impacts of EPA’s ruling will affect many families.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 survey statistics, 2.4 million
American housing units (12 percent of all homes) burned wood as their primary
heating fuel, compared with 7 percent that depended upon fuel oil.
Local LOCM +4.76% governments in some states have gone
even further than EPA, not only banning the sale of noncompliant stoves,
but even their use as fireplaces. As a result, owners face fines for infractions.
Puget Sound, Washington is one such location. Montréal, Canada proposes to
eliminate all fireplaces within its city limits.
Only weeks after EPA enacted its new stove rules, attorneys
general of seven states sued the agency to crack down on wood-burning water
heaters as well. The lawsuit was filed by Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts,
New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont, all predominately Democrat
states. Claiming that EPA’s new regulations didn’t go far enough to
decrease particle pollution levels, the plaintiffs cited agency estimates
that outdoor wood boilers will produce more than 20 percent of wood-burning
emissions by 2017. A related suit was filed by the environmental group
Earth Justice.
Did EPA require a motivational incentive to tighten its
restrictions? Sure, about as much as Br’er Rabbit needed to persuade Br’er
Fox to throw him into the briar patch. This is but another example of EPA and
other government agencies working with activist environmental groups to
sue and settle on claims that afford leverage to enact new regulations
which they lack statutory authority to otherwise accomplish.
“Sue and settle “ practices, sometimes referred to as
“friendly lawsuits”, are cozy deals through which far-left radical environmental
groups file lawsuits against federal agencies wherein court-ordered “consent
decrees” are issued based upon a prearranged settlement agreement they collaboratively
craft together in advance behind closed doors. Then, rather than allowing the
entire process to play out, the agency being sued settles the lawsuit by
agreeing to move forward with the requested action both they and the litigants want.
And who pays for this litigation? All-too-often we taxpayers
are put on the hook for legal fees of both colluding parties. According to
a 2011 GAO report, this amounted to millions of dollars awarded to environmental
organizations for EPA litigations between 1995 and 2010. Three “Big
Green” groups received 41% of this payback, with Earthjustice accounting
for 30 percent ($4,655,425). Two other organizations with histories of
lobbying for regulations EPA wants while also receiving agency funding
are the American Lung Association (ALA) and the Sierra Club.
In addition, the Department of Justice forked over at
least $43 million of our money defending EPA in court between 1998 and 2010.
This didn’t include money spent by EPA for their legal costs in connection
with those rip-offs because EPA doesn’t keep track of their attorney’s time on
a case-by-case basis.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has concluded that Sue and
Settle rulemaking is responsible for many of EPA’s “most controversial,
economically significant regulations that have plagued the business
community for the past few years”. Included are regulations on power
plants, refineries, mining operations, cement plants, chemical manufacturers,
and a host of other industries. Such consent decree-based rulemaking enables
EPA to argue to Congress: “The court made us do it.”
Directing special attention to these congressional end
run practices, Louisiana Senator David Vitter, top Republican on the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee, has launched an investigation.
Last year he asked his Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to join
with AGs of 13 other states who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
seeking all correspondence between EPA and a list of 80 environmental,
labor union and public interest organizations that have been party to litigation
since the start of the Obama administration.
Other concerned and impacted parties have little influence
over such court procedures and decisions. While the environmental group
is given a seat at the table, outsiders who are most impacted are excluded,
with no opportunity to object to the settlements. No public notice about
the settlement is released until the agreement is filed in court…after the
damage has been done.
In a letter to Caldwell, Senator Vitter wrote: “The collusion
between federal bureaucrats and the organizations entering consent agreements
under a shroud of secrecy represents the antithesis of a transparent government,
and your participation in the FOIA request will help Louisianans understand
the process by which these settlements were reached.”
Fewer citizens would challenge EPA’s regulatory determinations
were it not for its lack of accountability and transparency in accomplishing
through a renegade pattern of actions what they cannot achieve through democratic
legislative processes.
A recent example sets unachievable CO2 emission limits
for new power plants. As I reported in my January 14 column, a group within
EPA’s own Science Advisory Board (SAB) determined that the studies upon
which that regulation was based had never been responsibly peer reviewed,
and that there was no evidence that those limits can be accomplished using
available technology.
Compared with huge consequences of EPA’s regulatory
war on coal, the fuel source that provides more than 40 percent of America’s
electricity, a clamp-down on humble residential wood-burning stoves and
future water heaters may seem to many people as a merely a trifling or inconsequential
matter. That is, unless it happens to significantly affect your personal life.
As a Washington Times editorial emphasized, the ban is
of great concern to many families in cold remote off-grid locations. It
noted, for example, that “Alaska’s 663,000 square miles is mostly forestland,
offering residents and abundant source of affordable firewood. When
county officials floated a plan to regulate the burning of wood, residents
were understandably inflamed.”
Quoting Representative Tammie Wilson speaking to the
Associated Press, the Times reported: “Everyone wants clean air. We just
want to make sure that we can also heat our homes” Wilson continued: “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 as the immediate risk of freezing when the mercury plunges.”
And speaking of theoretical computer model-based warnings,
where’s that global warming when we really need it?
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http://agenda21news.com/2015/01/epas-wood-burning-stove-ban-chilling-consequences-many-rural-people/#more-4335
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