The Alaska Legislature has passed House Joint Resolution 11, urging the United States Environmental Protection Agency to develop a woodstove certification program in Fairbanks, and for the state Department of Environmental Conservation to develop an economically and legally defensible state implementation plan for the Fairbanks North Star Borough nonattainment area.
The resolution highlights the serious health concerns associated with fine particle pollution in the Fairbanks North Star Borough nonattainment area, particularly during winter. Studies identified wood burning as the greatest contributor of PM2.5 pollution, and efforts taken under the state DEC’s moderate and serious state implementation plans resulted in a significant reduction in PM2.5 emissions.
However, the resolution notes that the United States EPA’s national wood heater certification program is deeply flawed. This is due to United States EPA-certified appliances installed in the Fairbanks North Star Borough nonattainment area failing to decrease PM2.5 emissions compared to previously installed solid fuel burning appliances due to the United EPA’s failure to competently manage and implement testing standards for this program.
“Improving air quality is a complex issue that requires collaboration and a multi-pronged approach,” said Rep.Will Stapp (R-Fairbanks), the prime sponsor of HJR 11.
“This resolution recognizes the tremendous efforts of the people of the North Star Borough to come into compliance, only to have the EPA change the regulations they previously set. This resolution offers the opportunity for common sense solutions, particularly for the people of that community,” he said.
The resolution also expresses concern that the United States EPA seems intent on turning attention toward so-called greener sources of heat, including electric heat pumps that will not work as solutions in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
The resolution highlights the need for adequate and affordable sources of heat in harsh subarctic winter conditions and acknowledges that a pathway for the use of solid fuel-burning appliances is essential to residents of the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
The resolution urges the United States EPA to develop a woodstove certification program that the state DEC and residents of the Fairbanks North Star Borough nonattainment area can rely on to address the core threat to clean and healthy winter air in Fairbanks and urges the state DEC to develop an economically and legally defensible state implementation plan.
The goal by the former FNSB mayor, Luke Hopkins, was to wean Fairbanks away from wood stoves, AND, heating oil. That’s why Hopkins is a member of the gas board and a close ally of gasline supporter and disgraced former governor Bill Walker. Walker is long gone, as is Hopkin’s son, Grier, another climate activist and carbon clown. Scott Kendall, political war mongerer, is Mr. Hopkin’s son-in-law, but they don’t want you to know that.
Fairbanksans have always used wood stoves to keep themselves warm during the cold. The winter inversions, which trap air at lower levels, has always occured in Fairbanks, and always will.
But Luke Hopkins apparently preferred a civil war in his community between climate activists and folks needing lower cost warmth for their families. Climate action fanatics don’t care who they harm.
Hopkin’s came close to getting his civil war about 10 years ago. I remember that. Wood stove smoke during the winter cold blasts is no big deal, unless your an idiot and go skiing in it at low altitudes. The air pollution in the winter is about 5% of the air particulate pollution during the warm summers when forest fires occur. Sometimes you can smell the smoke for weeks at a time during June through August. But the environmental wackos don’t want to hear that.
How about the government just stay out of it and let the folks from Fairbanks decide how they want to heat their homes?
There’s no money in that is why.
HAHAHAHA!!! Have they certified forest fires yet??? How friggin moronic to attempt to limit the freedom to stay warm without going broke under such a thin veil as this idiocy. Fairbanks used to have COAL as a heating source. My Dad’s service station that was on college and steese had a coal burning boiler in the 60s.
Another case of Minority Rule. Fairbanks should not set the Standard for Air Quality, in the State of anywhere else. Their Inversion Feature in the winter concentrates the heavier air—All Exhaust. In the summer the town is usually affected by Tundra Fires that create unhealthy smoky conditions. Inviting the EPA to come up here to regulate a few hundred Wood Burners is asking for a Giant Green Bootprint that would eventually ban, not only Wood Stoves, but eventually our Gas Cooking Ranges— Like New York.. It has become a one size fits all world. Please stop this Green Insanity NOW. Besides all that— Fairbanks Sucks..
Lighten up, Sarge. A few Liberal, Commie wack- jobs in Fairbanks, suck. Our neighbors to the North are good Alaskans. Most of them will tell you that the air quality skirmishes are the work of a few nut case Democrats, using a megaphone to yell out. More conservatives are getting elected up there. The bad ones either quit or got their asses kicked in the last election.
The only thing that will make the environmental cult happy is if we’re freezing to death in the dark & Alaska is turned into one massive National Park. No oil, gas or mineral production. Only tourism
Can’t burn wood. Don’t use coal. Don’t use heating oil. Don’t use gas.
This isn’t environmental responsibility. This is a declaration of intent to thin out the undesirables (us) so our alleged betters will have all they need.
So people die along the way. Not their problem.
The West is committing suicide and the Chinese and Russians are laughing themselves silly.
Aren’t many of the people in Fairbanks of the mind set that wearing a mask while driving alone in vehicle is sound thinking and up to date information on not getting the coviids…… wait till the gas ranges are forced out.
That said. Use the mask for the particulate matter where it actually does something.
Howdy MJD, Good to Mask-Up, when It Hits The Fan in Juneau.
So is Cook Inlet natural gas still being trucked to the M-S Borough to be converted to LNG to then be trucked, using diesel fuel & with no backhaul, to Fairbanks using state money? The Interior Gas Utility?
LNG from Cook Inlet is being trucked to Fairbanks now and kept in large facilities there. They have recently signed a contract to get additional LNG from the north slope to accommodate the additional amounts needed. This will be the first commercial use of north slope gas.
That said, this fuel will be much cleaner than wood but nobody expects it to compete with wood economically.
Freezing in the dark. The new way. Popsicles don’t complain.
No fuel of any kind allowed in Fairbanks. You must use body heat or rub two sticks together. Remember people voted for this. For starters shut down all military fuel use and no fuel for the government as they need to lead the anti warmth crusade.
Folks this is big government ruling the stupid peasants.. The day is coming when the day will finally fall apart and then the poop will hit the fan. Look at the banks
corruption at work
Asking the EPA for their input is asking for a 5 year plan to ban all wood burners.
Maybe they can sequestrate the PM2.5
and inject it into the ground…….. or just say that’s what they’re doing and get free money from the feds?
The elected officials in Alaska have proven themselves to be wholly incompetent dealing with the badly polluted air in Fairbanks and North Pole. Let’s separate fact from fiction:
1. Natural gas is clean. If all the homes in Fairbanks had natural gas there would not be a air pollution problem. Natural gas just does not have the small particulates found in wood smoke. Alaska has, literally, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, but it remains in the ground because Big Oil wants it warehoused, and Alaska’s corrupt elected officials are okay with that.
2. Ground source heat pumps do work- and they do not emit pollution. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Canada all use them. (But they still need electricity to run, and the generation turbines do emit air pollution, except for the wind turbines and hydro turbines.) Again, Alaska’s elected officials are too stupid to get the Susitna Hydro Project built because their IQ’s are so low that they have zero vision.
3. Air pollution causes stoke, heart disease cancer and children breathing smoke as they grow up do not grow to their full genetic potential. In communist China, where the air is badly polluted, over 4,000 Chinese die every day due to air pollution. That’s between one and two million deaths per year.
Alaska is a basket case. With no leadership we are seeing our population drop and private industry is voting with its feet. Alaskans need honest, intelligent leaders.
I agree our elected leaders are useless. But we elected them, and re-elect them. At some point Alaska has to look in the collective mirror.
I don’t think this is a big oil problem. A customer is a customer, and they need money as much as we need cheap energy. This is a lack of political will since it doesn’t benefit the idiots we continue to elect.
Even before that idiot Walker I’ve supported the concept of powering the interior with natural gas. We have it in abundance, it would bring prices down, and hopefully raise the standard of living for the interior and the bush.
There is no reason we can’t build a pipeline to Fairbanks, and a hub to send gas to Nome and Delta. We lack the political will and foresight to bother to do so.
M. A.
Here’s how the world- for Big Oil- really works. To maximize profits, it needs to limit supply. Allowing too much gas or oil on the world market deflates price and profits. That is why Alaska’s natural gas is warehoused. Leaving it in the ground keeps prices up.
OPEC is an organization dedicated to limiting supply, and they do this by price fixing. Illegal in the USA, the price fixing of oil by OPEC still harms US consumers- but is good for oil corporation shareholders.
We don’t re-elect them the unions do.
There is common sense reverberating in this echo chamber. The question is, how do we propagate it to the outer world effectively enough to change the majority’s proudly stubborn group-think?
The governor needs to ban the EPA in AK.
Why are we even in the union at this point? No one in America would notice if we starved or froze.. our emergency food supply is in Oregon for example.
GOD given right to heat with God given wood in Alaska. You have no authority to say anything about it at all. Period.
It seems to me the state and borough are waging a multi front war on wood stoves. How about the scant number of firewood suppliers to be found and is this due to regulations on the selling of firewood? Used to be easy to find firewood for sale and reasonable price. Now we are almost compelled to rely soley on Aurora Energy. Long lead times to get wood and expensive as heck.
We’re all for clean air. However, calling in the EPA to help us is not the solution. The EPA has been weaponized and filled with incompetent fools from academia (professional students). Forcing people to purchase expensive heat pumps will only place more pressure on the grid. When that fails in winter, you’ll have everyone burning.
State legislators shame themselves when they get behind the idea of empowering ANY federal agency over ANY of the citizens of the State of Alaska. Voting to remand this issue to the ‘bureaucratic state’ is a bionically stupid idea.
The fact is, the EPA is only testing for combustion particulates, and only on a selective and virtue signaling basis. There are a myriad of other particulates in the air that are infinitely more harmful to life on this planet, and many of them are in nanoparticle form, intentionally sprayed upon our heads, applied in long streams out of the back of airplanes, using our tax dollars. Our own federal government, does more to destroy us, and life on this planet, than any essentially small amount of firewood than is burnt seasonally to keep human beings warm and safe, could ever do. What goes up into the air in the winter from combustion devices pales in comparison to what goes into the air in big fire season, or even a small one.
Aluminum, barium, and strontium are some of the known (and documented) nanoparticle-ized elements that form geoengineered “spray on clouds”. They are not contrails, and not in the least bit innocuous. Plants are at equal risk to humans, and without plants…
The EPA is one of the primary threats here.
One doesn’t find what one doesn’t test for. In this case, its intentional that ONLY combustion particulates are the ghost that is being chased after in order to distract from the truth…
If you are having any trouble believing this, just believe your eyes to start with. Think about what you are seeing. It is not condensation, and it is far more of a heinous threat than PM2.5 particles from woodstoves ever were or could be.
GeoengineeringWatch.org
*Dan Sullivan hasn’t got the RESTRICT Act (restrict all Americans liberty) passed yet, so I may as well say geoengineering is a criminal enterprise.
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