One In Five Homes Heated With Wood In Prince George? Rubbish

Monday, April 07, 2008 03:45 AM

Why in the world did we hire a California company to do air quality research in Prince George and at what cost?because if it was only $100 bucks it was too much.

The Sonoma study is so full of holes that it reminds me of that thing you use to strain the water out of spaghetti.

First and foremost , look up and down the street. Can you count every fifth house or business using wood to heat their homes and business? That's what the report will say, 15 to 20% of the homes in the city are heated by wood.

Absolutely not true, but instead of coming with some solid data that we might be able to buy in to , we will get a report that will use an asphalt plant in the US and a sawmill in Montana as the base line for comparison.

You have to ask yourself who was stupid enough to hire a company from California to do the study in the first place? It is a bit like asking a California company to tell us what size of furnace we will need to heat our home.

But here we are again and the problem is that when we stick this report on the shelf with the rest of them, nothing gets done for a considerable period of time.

If 15 to 20% of the homes are heating with wood in the city, lets take this novel approach and hire some students to go door to door, each group taking a section of the city. That will set the record straight for once and for all, but then that is too simple a method of getting to the bottom of our problem, and the mega industrial players are happy just to sit back and watch us stumble from study to study.

You don’t have to go to Oslo to know what our problem has been . At one time we called it the smell of money, we also dump a major amount of particulates into the air when we decide that slash burning is okay and the wind happens to be blowing this way. We also know that the refinery is a major contributor , but then this study didn’t factor them in.

Wow have we been smoked again, and again, and nothing gets down.

If we want to sell our city and move in a different direction as forestry loses ground in the economy, we sure seem bent on breaking the cup before it is even half full.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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Posted on Monday, April 07, 2008 03:45 AM in Views by Ben Meisner

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Comments

Posted by: owl on April 7 2008 7:56 AM

Taking a current inventory of actual installations and following that up with questions as to how much is burned is far too simple.

These people are scientists. They figure that to answer a tough question they need a tough solution. They even call it "robust".

Well, you have just burst that "robust" bubble. I don't think that the report is going to get a good airing in this city when it will be defended by the writer of it. I hope as many people as possible will come out to that event to watch the carpetbagger at work and give him/her a run for the money.

Posted by: diplomat on April 7 2008 8:37 AM

The Sonoma *study* is supposed to be a piece of persuasion, to convince people that the new fine particulate emitting *green* power plant in the downtown is a mere bagatelle. It is a stab in the dark, it has no year round data, it is basically meaningless and unscientific.

Strange how it materializes just now, at the precise moment when the mayor and council need something *positive* that can be published in the paper.

Home insurance companies in P.G. have the exact information about how many homes in the downtown area use wood stoves as a primary or secondary source of home heating.

This information must be revealed by a home owner when he/she intends to purchase insurance for a residence.

If a fire occurs and false information has been given the policy and coverage are invalid.

Posted by: lunarbase on April 7 2008 8:47 AM

I live in one of the tall apartments downtown and can easily tell you how many people heat with wood. Not anywhere near that much that the study says ! The largest group of users of wood heat are in the Norwood Street area and that whole area, there is maybe 10 people who heat with wood and only about 5 who do it often. I watch the smoke come up from the fires as they start and then as they die down. This is over the past two winters that I have lived downtown.
There is other holes in the survey, such as the oil refinery was not factored in, etc.

Posted by: Honestjoe on April 7 2008 9:23 AM

Well stated, Ben. More incompetence from the "City" bureaucracy. It is frustrating to know that we, the taxpayers, must shoulder the cost for all of this, plus the cost of renumeration for the politicians and bureaucrats, who make these decisions. Where are the checks and balances? Where is the indpendent audit of the City's spending?

Posted by: NMG on April 7 2008 9:44 AM

Good summary Ben. It's utterly amazing how often the real culprits escape the recognition that they deserve in this mess.

Common sense should dictate. I propose that two questions would bring it all home:

1) What does Prince George have in common with other cities with poor air?
2) What are cities with good air missing that Prince George has?

The answer, IMHO, can be found in Ben's article:

"At one time we called it the smell of money, we also dump a major amount of particulates into the air when we decide that slash burning is okay and the wind happens to be blowing this way. We also know that the refinery is a major contributor, but then this study didn�t factor them in"

It's not rocket science and you don't need a consultant. All you need are your eyes and a vantage point over the bowl on a poor air day. Your throat, chest and lungs should confirm the findings of your eyes as you decend into the virtual cesspool that is the bowl on these days.

Posted by: Bridge on April 7 2008 10:47 AM

One in five homes? We must still be in a stone age. They probably counted the fireplace chimneys and marked them down as users. The insurance idea is a good on but would they release that info to the public.

Cheers

Posted by: owl on April 7 2008 1:07 PM

They can since it is agglomerated info and does not identify individuals. I would like to see it broken down into differnt parts of the city.

They may not have the data readily available meaning we would have to pay to get someone to search that info out.

If it were ICBC, it would be easy. However, in this case there are multiple companies involved making it difficult. However, still worth a try since it could save some money doing the info gathering this way.

Posted by: caranmacil on April 7 2008 1:30 PM

Why count the exact percentage of homes with fireplaces? I mean just because someone has a woodstove it doesnt mean they use it much. When i bought my place it had three wood stoves! I am down to one now which i only use on cold (real cold) days. Ben is dead on when he points at industry. Until someone is willing to push for better polution control at the major sources we are not going to deal with the problem. It is an artifact of history that PG was built in the bowl, yet people still seem obsessed with preserving the down town and the bowl as the center of PG. So much so that one of the editors of the citizen proposed that new housing should be concentrated downtown. I dont thin we are going to attract a lot of home buyers when you can hardly breathe down there some days (well ok, some people dont seem to be affected but I can hardly breathe).

Posted by: owl on April 7 2008 3:25 PM

The survey many refer to about wood heating appliances includes every single such appliance including fireplaces.

I doubt many people in the bowl actually have wood fired furnaces.

As far as fireplaces go, one only has to drive around the neighbourhood to see that a significant number of the brick chimneys actually have a small metal flue extending from the old masonry flue liners.

Many of these fireplaces have been enclosed entirely, converted to a pellet burning insert, and most conversions are likely to gas.

I know that the houses/homes I go into typically do not have a wood burning fireplace and most certainly not a wood burning furnace. We have a neighbour who has one of those installed but has not used it for more than a decade. I see no wood delivery on this street, although most every house has a "fireplace" so to speak, but they are hardly wood burning and most certainly not the primary source of heat.

Drive around, count the number of gas flues from gas furnaces, look for inserts, and look for wood piles.

Do some sampling like that around three or 4 neighbourhoods and thik about the houses you visit and you will likely reach the same conclusion Ben has reached, the authors of the Sonoma report have made a scientific error.

The problem is, it will take someone with that kind of background to poke a hole in it and I doubt we have any scientists in this community interested in doing that and maybe not even capable of doing that since they are focused on other similarly narrow studies.

The perception is that wood burning is a sginificant source of the PM2.5 fraction. That was a conclusion which could almost be reached right at the onset since, if levoglucosan is at all present, the PM2.5 fraction will contain most if not all of it.

PM10 is still a size to deal with. While PM2.5 goes deeper into the respiratory system, PM10 does not exactly get caught up in nose hair. I too enters the respiratory system and does its work.

Posted by: diplomat on April 7 2008 3:40 PM

"I mean just because someone has a woodstove it doesnt mean they use it much."

Well, exactly. People who rarely if ever use their wood stoves are not going to invest a couple of thousand dollars for a new one just to get their hands on a 250 dollar rebate certificate!!! How many people use their wood stove full time, part time, once a year or not at all? The wood stove conversion thing is a worthwhile effort only when the owner relies on it for most or all of the heat. And it should be continued regardless of the *downtown energy wood burning bio-mass not-greenhouse gases producing water heating fine particulates emitting city administration pet project with futuristic design non-Oslo locally invented smoke stack equipped so-called green power plant.*

I have read (city?) claims that 4 woodburning residential stoves produce 1 tonne of 2.5 fine particulates per year! That of course assumes that they are belching smoke 24/7/365 even when the outside temperature is 32 degrees Celsius.

That would be as much as the new plant would produce per year! Believable? Absolutely not.

Nobody has the slightest clue about the accuracy of the figures that are being thrown at us - the only thing one can rely on is the dogged determination of some to bless us with this new pollution emitter, come what may.

Posted by: Harbinger on April 7 2008 5:48 PM

One in five homes not being held hostage to extortion by BC Hydro and BC Gas? Numbers maybe wrong. Principle the same.

Posted by: Junco on April 7 2008 9:22 PM

It really rankles me that this so called "study" was done by a Californian company. Who was the asshat who thought of contracting that one out? Brain drain indeed. Hello... we've got a University up on the hill. Heck we've got a couple of call centers here that could have done a survey. City taxes were spent to bring them here, perhaps they owe us one or could have participated for a reduced rate. There is a reason the survey was done by a Californian company and I would guess limited access to the information and the criteria are the reason. As a taxpayer I would like to know how much is this little ruse is costing us?

Oh and don't ever tell me that the reason I can't roast a weiner in my backyard is because there are too many particulates because 1 out of 5 households heat with wood.

Posted by: owl on April 7 2008 11:04 PM

Diplomat ... someone misplaced a decimal once more ... must be the Moose's influence.

40 might be reasonable, but not 4.

Also, a survey was done 3 years ago. Province wide.

For those who are interested in a bit of detail, please read the linked report. It provides some data from the horse�s mouth, and it ain�t one from California.

The survey was done province wide in 2005. The report provides the result and provides some background information about the levels of particulates from standard wood burning appliances to catalytic appliances.
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/air/airquality/pdfs/wood_emissions.pdf

The PM2.5 ranges between 23.2kg/tonne to 4.8kg/tonne of wood. The PM10 fraction is identical since the emissions are primarily the smaller fraction with some �flyash�.

The number of cords per tonne of dry wood depends on the type of wood. Based on several species, lets use 10 cords per tonne to make it easy on us.

To make it easier once more, let us say a house, relying totally on wood for heat, requires 5 cords of wood per year.

Thus, that house burns a half a tonne of wood and emits 23 kg of PM2.5 into the air. It would take over 40 houses to emit the tonne of PM2.5. Whoever said 4 houses misplaced a decimal.

The survey shows that PG (not just the bowl) emits about 308 tonnes of PM2.5 per year which is just under 3% of the provincial total.

Believe it or not, beehive burners used to put out about 1,000 tonnes of PM2.5 per year.

So, the question might be, how come the air quality has not changed all that much?

Posted by: owl on April 7 2008 11:05 PM

oops ... it was a 2004 survey .....