EPA's Wood-Burning Stove Ban Has Chilling Consequences For Many Rural People
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.
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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 -1.82% 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’erFox 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.
Page 2 of 2
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.”
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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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