New Clean Air Bylaw Given First 2 Readings

Tuesday, February 02, 2010 04:00 AM

Prince George, B.C.- Prince George City Council has given the first two readings to a new Clean Air Bylaw. There are a number of changes including some added definitions, but the major changes allow for backyard recreational fires, and expand the no open burning to cover the entire City.

Here are some of the highlights:

There shall be no hydronic heaters allowed in the City of Prince George (a hydronic heater is commonly referred to as a wood boiler)
Requiring all new construction to contain a secondary heat source where a wood burning appliance is proposed to be the sole source;
Requiring the installation of a secondary heat source during a building renovation over a certain size where a wood burning appliance is the sole source of heat.
Expanding the no “open fires” area to the entire city (does not include recreational fires);
Providing safety and siting requirements for recreational fires; and
Redrafting the Offence and Penalty section to allow for tickets, and include ticket amounts forthe relevant bylaw sections.

The ticket amounts range from $100 dollars to $300 dollars.

Here are the violations and their corresponding tickets:

Using a wood burning appliance while an air quality advisory is in effect. $200.00
Operating a wood burning appliance causing injury or damage. $100.00
Installation of a non-compliant woodburning appliance. $300.00
Installation of a hydronic heater. $300.00
Failure to install and maintain additional form of space heating in new building. $300.00
Failure to install and maintain additional form of space heating during building renovation $200.00
Failure to obtain a Building Permit for a wood burning appliance $200.00
Burning prohibited fuel type. $200.00
Conducting open burning.$300.00
Igniting or maintaining a recreational fire during an air quality advisory. $100.00
Maintaining a recreational fire causing injury or damage. $100.00
Burning prohibitive fuel type in a recreational fire. $100.00
Failure to control and supervise a recreation fire. $100.00
Failure to possess fire extinguishing equipment $100.00
Failure to maintain a recreation fire in a safe location. $100.00
Failure to use dust control measures. $200.00
Failure to use sufficient dust suppressing liquids. $200.00
Sweeping or maintenance operations causing injury or damage. $200.00

It is possible to have numerous offences related to a single incident.

Staff say they consider these proposed changes strike a balance between further reducing fine particulate levels from wood smoke and dust, while allowing some activities that residents support and wish to continue (such as recreational fires).

Councillor Brian Skakun says he doesn't think it goes far enough because it doesn't address industry and doesn't address vehicle emissions.

Councillor Dave Wilbur says the recreation fire rules may work fine within the bowl, but for a rural resident, walking back to the house while a fire pit is burning on an acreage would be a breach of the new regulations. "I think interfering with people when they are not interfering with the Bowl is interfering with the rural life style and goes too far."

Councillor Sherri Green says the latest survey indicates 58% of those questioned did not want further restrictions on recreational fires "It isn't a strong majority but it is a majority none the less. I would just ask people to be a good neighbour, If you have a neighbour who has asthma, be aware of that, and try to be a good neighbour and talk to each other before jumping to the next step."

Mayor Dan Rogers says it will be interesting when the bylaw goes to third reading to see if the public says it wasn't strong enough.

Now that the bylaw has been given the first two readings, there will be an informal public hearing before the bylaw is given third reading. That public hearing may take place as early as March 1st.

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Posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 04:00 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Mr. PG on February 2 2010 7:29 AM

Now we will have regulated weiner roasts with fines for over cooking.

Who will be monitoring my back yard? .... the clean air fairy?

Posted by: He spoke on February 2 2010 7:46 AM

tee hee hee, the clean air fairy.... its alive.

OK, so they tell us not to burn wood. Then the city still is high on the bioenergy movement of burning wood waste to produce heat for multiple public buildings. So how come the city is allowed to be hypocrites.

I'm sorry, but no matter how well engineered it is, it will add particulates to the airshed. So can we rely on the clean air fairy to blow the whistle on its own employer, or will the fairy just turn a blind eye of conveinence to the city.

Posted by: HabsFans on February 2 2010 8:23 AM

If I remember correctly, some clean-air arm of the Government is collecting air emission samples from residential neighbourhoods right now. The project started in November and is going until March, with results to be released next fall. I am assuming that this Clean Air bylaw only Phase One, depending on the residential air quality sampling?

As I mentioned before, get ready for a city-wide ban on wood stoves once these results are made public.

Posted by: acrider54 on February 2 2010 8:34 AM

How about sweeping up all the sand and gravel from winter before September this year, might help.

Posted by: Mercenary on February 2 2010 8:43 AM

My gawd. The arrogance of some people....

Do they think money grows on trees? Gas is very expensive and will only get more so in the long run. Wood is a nice option for people who don't want to spend a fortune on gas bills during the long winter months that we have up here.

Posted by: diplomat on February 2 2010 8:46 AM

"As I mentioned before, get ready for a city-wide ban on wood stoves once these results are made public."

Well, the air will be a lot cleaner. Isn't that what it is all about?

Posted by: highlanderpg on February 2 2010 8:54 AM

I wonder if politicians go to some sort of screw the taxpayer training?? If you want to remove fine particulate from PG skies, go talk to the mills. I don't know about anyone else but anytime we get a poor air quality day I find it ironic that the pulp mills are pouring out smoke that 100 woodstoves couldn't compete with.

but yet we the taxpayer get the fines, what a crock.

Posted by: HabsFans on February 2 2010 8:59 AM

"As I mentioned before, get ready for a city-wide ban on wood stoves once these results are made public."

No, I think that the air will be only slightly cleaner, because the major contributors to fine particulate are not wood stoves, but large industry.

Posted by: He spoke on February 2 2010 9:08 AM

Provide safety and siting requirements, WOW. can anyone say 1984.

If a person is so stupid that they sit that close to a fire, and gets their clothing to combust.... well I say, cheers to Charles Darwin.

If a person is so drunk that he places themselve in danger with a fire, well, i don't think they are thinking about the bylaw at that time,... cheers to Charles Darwin.

Stop being a mother hen.

Posted by: mythoughts on February 2 2010 10:18 AM

"Well, the air will be a lot cleaner. Isn't that what it is all about?"

NOPE! I agree with Mercenary. Wood is a better option than spending a lot of money on gas bills. There's a lot of unemployed people in this town who can't afford gas anymore & wood IS there only option.

Posted by: gus on February 2 2010 10:19 AM

"There shall be no hydronic heaters allowed in the City of Prince George (a hydronic heater is commonly referred to as a wood boiler)"

WOW!!!! that comes from City Hall????? Hydronics comes from "hydro" meaning water. It is the distribution of heat by hot water or steam. A hydronic boiler can be fired by any fuel. Most commonly these days by gas or oil, and in industrial settings by wood.

In fact, the community energy system, if it is ever built will be a hydronic system, likely fired by wood and possibly other biomass sources.

So, looks like no community energy system then!!

Posted by: gus on February 2 2010 10:39 AM

"Staff say they consider these proposed changes strike a balance between further reducing fine particulate levels from wood smoke and dust"

Let me get this straight. This is a "Clean Air Bylaw". Why do we have fire safety matters in a clean air bylaw.

Another Sesame Street thing here. "which of these things does not belong?"

From the above article, I would say the following do not belong under a clean air bylaw.

1. Providing safety and siting requirements for recreational fires;

2. Operating a wood burning appliance causing injury or damage. $100.00

3. Installation of a hydronic heater. $300.00 (a hydronic heater is a hot water boiler which can be fired by a variety of fuels.

4. Maintaining a recreational fire causing injury or damage. $100.00

5. Failure to control and supervise a recreation fire. $100.00

6. Failure to possess fire extinguishing equipment $100.00

7. Failure to maintain a recreation fire in a safe location. $100.00

8.Sweeping or maintenance operations causing injury or damage. $200.00

Posted by: He spoke on February 2 2010 10:51 AM

Habs Fan, actually it is the city residence that are the biggest air poluters now. The industry has done their part. if you don't believe me check with BC environment.

Here is one for all them tree hugging, fish kissers. Why shouldn't we burn wood. It leaves a smaller carbon foot print than burning natural gas, and also has less greenhouse gas emissions.

Posted by: gus on February 2 2010 10:55 AM

Fine for "Failure to control and supervise a recreation fire. $100.00"

"Councillor Dave Wilbur says the recreation fire rules may work fine within the bowl, but for a rural resident, walking back to the house while a fire pit is burning on an acreage would be a breach of the new regulations."

He may be interpreting the word "supervise". Not having read the proposed bylaw, which might have some prescriptive meaning of the word "supervise" in it, I think it could be argued that one can "supervise" a fire without constantly being present The amount of direct observation from a close proximity would depend on may things.

A small fire in a properly designed fire pit sitting in the middle of a 30 foot square brick patio with no nearby shurbs and no overhanging trees on a relatively non-windy day burning fuel that does not spark would not be a major problem.

These sort of laws are basically unenforceable. They are complaint driven and incident driven. You have an out of control fire, call the fire department, they come to assist, and you get to pay a fine.

What we really have then is a user pay fee. Why do we not just do that? Call 911 .... if it is your fault, you pay.

Posted by: seamutt on February 2 2010 10:55 AM

I may have missed it but is there real information on how much recreational fires contribute to bowl pollution to warrant all this attention from city hall? I think this is just a smokescreen from city hall to cover up thier poor performance in cleaning the roads after winter.

Posted by: hammmy on February 2 2010 11:47 AM

Always attacking the little guys hey! Not the real polluters of this city.

Posted by: Loki on February 2 2010 12:40 PM

How does this affect his worship's "wood first" building policy?

On the one hand we need to support local industry by encouraging local builders to use wood as a primary building material.
How that brings anything into the economy is beyond me. That wood be just local money circulating locally. From what I understand of macroeconomics, each region must sell local product to foreign regions so that foreign region will send its cash back into the local economy thereby increasing said regions cash reserves or fiscal health. Putting money on a merry-go-round does not fit the learning.

On the other hand, we could support the local wood industry by burning all the branches and other debris as bio fuel in our homes. Oh yeah, we are not supposed to burn wood in this wood based town. Could this be an oxymoron?

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Posted by: He spoke on February 2 2010 12:46 PM

All this is being led by a special interest group. Maybe we need to start up a Wood Heat Association of Prince George.

Posted by: pglady on February 2 2010 5:04 PM

Who looks after the folks who have the hydronic heaters already in their yards. Do they get to keep burning and sharing the smoke with all the people in the area????? I want to know how they deal with that and if it is the only heat source what then.

Posted by: trackster on February 2 2010 6:13 PM

I do not have a wood burning device in my home, but I wish I did!
As a boy, we lived in a windy old house, that had wood stoves. because there was no insulation in the home, except for some sawdust in some walls,it took between fifty and sixty cords of wood a year in a very cold winter.
As you can imagine, there was in winter, the prevalence of wood smoke at all times. Most of the homes in my town had the same, although many only took 20 to 30 cords a year. In other cases the use of coal as a supplement to wood was used.
Often our town and hundreds of other would be blanketed in blue smoke when there was an inversion.
Beehive burners belched smoke year around, and fly ash lay thick for considerable distance around mills.
Ironically, with the exception of a few cases the population was healthy and reasonably fit. (After all getting all that wood together for winter kept you that way.
The once a year cold was expected and and at time it morphed into flue. No one had cancer!
Now day's we have our air filled with diesel fumes, sulfur and acids from industry, and all types of chemicals.
One in five people have cancer and one in four have some sort of allergy that is supposedly caused by air emissions.
So I'm beginning to think maybe we should all go back to wood burning.
So here is a simple little test to make you decide.
First, find a big eighteen wheeler and climb up by the stack when it is running and take a few deep whiffs of diesel fumes. Then climb on your roof when the gas furnace is running and do likewise. Third, build an open fire, and let the smoke drift into your face and take lots of whiffs.
ANY BETS ON WHICH ONE WILL CAUSE YOU THE LEAST STRESS AND PROBLEMS???

Posted by: NMG on February 2 2010 6:14 PM

"All this is being led by a special interest group. Maybe we need to start up a Wood Heat Association of Prince George"

Talk about irony. I'd bet that the the people using wood as their primary source of heat as compared to gas, are outnumbered 100 to 1 in PG. Would that not make the "wood heat people" the special interest group?

As for the rest of it, when is the City going to tell us what THEY are doing to clean up the air? You know, how about better sweeping? How about using less dirt? How about burning less fuel in their fleet vehicles by going to cars instead of trucks? How about making sure that city equipment isn't blowing blue smoke all over the place? How about turfing plans for things like community energy systems which will add more particulate to the airshed?

In short, how about ANYTHING proactive coming from the City? All I hear is them saying "the residents have to do their part" and "the Province and Feds are the ones that regulate industry". So in essence, they essentially have no role to play in anything other that creating by-laws that likely will never be enforced and telling other people what they need to do. What a bloody joke. I'd suggest that what the city themsleves are doing to resolve some of the issues is moronic, but I'd hate to offend the morons amongst us.

Posted by: NMG on February 2 2010 6:19 PM

trackster, all I can say is thank God I'm younger than you and didn't live in that city, LOL :)

Posted by: pglady on February 3 2010 8:01 AM

Posted by: taxinapothole on February 3 2010 8:29 AM

right on the money "trackster". I lived in a town that was very similar. It is called Prince George. It was that way of course, before we got the pulp mills and the refinery.

Not once is industry mentioned in this new "Clean air by-law", WHY Dan Rogers, please tell me why.

Can't figure it out Dan? Let me tell you! We have a bunch of puppets running this city. How disgraceful you all are, to the tax payers of this city. You know, the people that pay the bills for the City of Prince George.

Posted by: Loki on February 3 2010 12:04 PM

I have made the statement that it is industry that is the biggest contributor, and that with the available technology,industry should be able to reduce the amount of contaminants it introduces into our air shed. I still stand by that.

What is good for the goose: I believe that this new clean air initiative does have some merit for the residents of PG. As much as I think this is a little over bearing and over the top in regards to the residential homes, but valid none the less.

Would it be so bad if private home owners capitalized on this same technology for their personal/private wood fired appliances.

We want industry to implement these technologies, let's show them that it is indeed them by getting on-board with reducing the particulate emissions from private home sources by implementing those technologies at home.

There is validity in the statement that wood appliances do contribute to air quality advisories. If they included a mandate that if a home owner wants to burn wood, they must have particulate and emission controls in place instead of a plain old flu spewing raw smoke. I think this would be a more acceptable solution to home owners that want to burn wood as they have in the past. This INSTEAD OF forbidding burning or requiring insipid standards for burning fuels.

Posted by: gamblor on February 3 2010 1:06 PM

Too bad hydronic heaters are banned - showcasing City Hall's lack of knowledge on the subject. Clean burning wood gasification boilers from europe are extremely efficient and very clean (EPA certified even), much more so than even the best woodstoves. The cavemen in office just set this town back several decades with that one.

Posted by: chrislivingdowntown on February 4 2010 5:29 AM

I bet ya everyone who just posted is over the age of 60 and could care less about their health so sure why not burn wood have at er/ What do you care you will be dead soon anyways right.

Posted by: taxinapothole on February 4 2010 11:00 AM

"chrislivingdowntown" this 58 year old guy could give you a lesson on being self sufficient! I could survive with a tarp and a wood fire, you could not. Actually, I wouldn't even need a tarp if one was not available.

Wood fires have kept us warm since the beginning of time. Big industry has NOT.........do you get it?