Today is the third winter Spare the Air day of the year. That means that burning wood, fire logs or solid fuel will be banned both indoors and outdoors for 24 hours.
Last winter, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District received 3,777 citizen complaints about residential wood burning during the season’s 15 Spare the Air days. Those complaints resulted in a total of 346 warnings to wood burners in nine counties and 13 tickets carrying a $400 fine (See table below).
Aaron Richardson, a spokesman for the BAAQMD, said by email that the agency has only collected $800 in fines from the previous two winters, but that the chief point of banning wood fires on certain winter days is about improving air quality, not raising revenue. He added that early studies suggest that wood burning may be down by 15 percent from five years ago.
Here’s Richardson on how the BAAQMD enforces wood burning bans:
“We have about 70 inspectors on staff, and though not all of them are dispatched at any one time for wood burning duty, we send out patrols of various sizes on Winter Spare the Air days, depending on the day and availability.
“Inspectors must witness and document a violation to issue a citation. We track all complaints received and use those to help plan neighborhoods to patrol.
“They look for smoke, and are trained in smoke plume recognition and opacity, and they must go to the physical location of the fire to determine and document the source before writing a citation.”
Warnings and Tickets Issued for Wood Burning on Winter Spare the Air Days Winter 2010-2011 (4 days of ban) Winter 2011-2012 (15 days of ban) County Warnings Tickets Warnings Tickets Alameda 5 0 10 0 Contra Costa 5 1 57 4 Marin 5 0 48 3 Napa 0 0 51 1 San Francisco 0 0 1 0 Santa Clara 13 1 32 2 San Mateo 2 0 31 1 Solano 0 0 8 0 Sonoma 29 0 108 2 Total 59 2 346 13Source: BAAQMD
This season, first time offenders, who would have previously received a warning letter, will now be obliged to take an online class on the public health impacts of wood smoke.
Would you report your neighbor? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments section below.
Wood is free like water is free, food is free, like oil is free, you just have to go get it from the earth.
Having keyed that, I have driven 880 at night through Hayward on winter days that truely qualify as spare the air days and breathing is a very unpleasant, and certainly unhealthy chore due to all the fireplace smoke. I am sure many are burning something other than proper fireplace wood. Come on folks, maybe 5 nights a year you could turn on your gas furnace? No? Burn coal.
We purchased a very clean burning, low particulate output, Harman pellet stove. Although it cost several thousand dollars, it paid for itself within four years. We bought it looking ahead to things like possible recessions, layoffs, etc. Good thing we did. Every appliance we purchased has been energy star. Our washer is a front loader which uses less electricity and less water. The only incandescent bulbs in the house are the heat lamps used to heat the bathrooms and a couple of lower watt bulbs in living room reading lamps. We live in a smaller size house and have a native front yard (which requires watering once or twice a month in July, August, and September) and we grow vegetables using drip irrigation and mulch and raise chickens in the back for eggs and manure. I have three compost bins, all running year around for kitchen waste, garden leavings, and chicken manure. We understand that the electricity used here is filling someone else's air with coal smoke; and having been on reservations recently, we understand that if a modern version of "Dances With Wolves" were to be made it would be "Dances with Old Hybrid Batteries" or "Dances with Toxic Waste."
Winter Gotcha!