If you’re driving a 1967 Mustang convertible (and congratulations if you are), the exhaust you’re spewing is a lot dirtier than what is coming out of a 2010 Prius, or any other contemporary car.
But neither the state nor the federal government is going to force you to retrofit your ride with a catalytic converter or any other exhaust-cleaning device, and they aren’t going to even think about telling you to take the car off the road.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation, however, is now pushing for new rules on outdoor wood furnaces that would force many current owners to retrofit their furnaces and force others to get rid of them altogether.
Among a batch of reasonable proposals to regulate these devices, also called outdoor wood boilers, the DEC has included a couple of stinkers.
Stinker No. 1 would force current owners of the furnaces to replace them, at the latest, by 2020. People who first fired up their furnaces before September 2005 would have to throw them on the scrap heap by the end of August 2015.
The DEC is basing what it calls its “phase-out period,” on an estimated “useful life” of the furnaces of 10 years. The estimate is based on warranties offered with some of the furnaces, which last for 10 years.
Since when is the life of any machine based on its warranty?
Cars don’t come with 43-year warranties, but that ’67 Mustang, if it was polished and pampered, could be purring along now just as sweetly as the day it was bought.
The “useful life” of big machines like furnaces is based on the quality of the machine to begin with and the way it is serviced and operated, and often bears no relation to the length of the warranty.
These furnaces are large investments costing several thousand dollars. Forcing people to lose some of the use of their furnaces and, therefore, their investments, by retroactively applying new regulations is unfair.
And the husbanding of resources through careful use is environmentally responsible. Your ’67 Mustang might be polluting more than a contemporary car but, if you’re still using it to get you around, that means you haven’t been buying other new cars for the past 43 years.
From a broad perspective, keeping older machines going is just as green, if not more so, than consuming all the resources necessary to produce newer, cleaner models.
Stinker No. 2 would ban the owners of the outdoor furnaces from using them in the summer. In northern New York, they would have to be out of use from May 15 through Aug. 31; elsewhere, from April 15 through Sept. 30.
Even with global warming and the horrible humid weather we’ve been having recently, state officials should know that May nights in the North Country can be cold. Nights in early June and late August can be chilly, too.
Is it the business of the DEC to regulate when people heat their homes?
Besides, some people use the outdoor furnaces to heat water for their homes and to heat swimming pools.
The state’s concerns about summer use – that the smoke will hover in the hot air and discourage warm-weather recreation – are addressed by the rest of the proposals calling for higher stacks and banning the burning of everything but clean wood or wood pellets.
Most of the complaints about the outdoor furnaces come not from their use but their misuse – specifically, the burning of garbage. It’s rude and wrong to burn plastic, tires, rubber, yard waste, construction debris, animal carcasses or any of the other 22 categories of burnable junk prohibited in the regulations.
People who pollute the air with the toxins created by burning things like plastic should be prosecuted.
But people using wood, a renewable resource, to heat the air and water in their homes, instead of using nonrenewable resources like oil or natural gas, should be praised, not punished.
Have you ever seen wood fouling a wetland or killing wildlife?
The smoke can be problematic, and the DEC is doing the right thing by setting stack height minimums and emission limits on new furnaces.
But the real problem lies with those few who use the machines as trash incinerators. Those few abusers should be punished and not all the others who have found an alternative source of home heating.
Local editorials represent the opinion of The Post-Star editorial board, which consists of Publisher Rick Emanuel, Editor Ken Tingley, Editorial Page Editor Mark Mahoney and citizen member Roger Guglielmo.
http://poststar.com/
http://furnasmanonehourfurnace.ca/
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