EPA Tells People In Interior Of Alaska (In Sub-Zero Temperature) To Stop Burning Wood To Keep Warm - US Chronicle

EPA Tells People In Interior Of Alaska (In Sub-Zero Temperature) To Stop Burning Wood To Keep Warm 

EPA Tells People In Interior Of Alaska (In Sub-Zero Temperature) To Stop Burning Wood To Keep Warm

By Phoenix Brooks | 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be taking action against the wood-burning stoves that are used to heat many of the homes in the interior of Alaska, where temperatures can regularly reach -20 degrees.
The agency is targeting the cities of Fairbanks and North Pole, who have a combined population of 100,000 people, and many of those residents are forced to rely on wood-burning to keep themselves warm throughout the year.
“It’s all one thing — when you most need the heat is when you’re most apt to create a serious air pollution problem for yourself and the people in your community,” said Tim Hamlin, the director of E.P.A.’s Region 10, which includes Alaska.
As a result, according to environmentalist groups like Citizens for Clean Air, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, and the Sierra Club, the air has become polluted with wood smoke, and has become hazardous to breath.
The three environmentalist groups listed above filed a lawsuit to put pressure on the EPA to step in. According to a press release from Earth Justice:

“The type of fine particulate matter pollution prevalent in Fairbanks—2.5 micrometers or less in diameter—has been found to cause a wide range of serious health problems, including asthma attacks, chronic respiratory disease, reduction in lung function, hospitalizations and emergency room visits for cardiopulmonary diseases, cancer, and even premature death.
Fine particulate matter air pollution is of particular danger to children, reducing lung development, causing asthma, and impairing the immune system. The elderly and those with chronic disease also face heightened risks.”

The groups are seeking to have the courts take action to force the EPA to enforce the rules set down by the Clean Air Act.

With mounting pressure from the environmental movement, to limit the effect that mankind is having on the planet, the EPA is considering stiff fines for the residents of the area who are in non-compliance.
Part of the problem is that alternative options for heating homes are simply not an option for many of the residents of Fairbanks and North Pole, either due to the unavailability of other options, or because they are simply too expensive.
Lance Roberts, a member of the Fairbanks Borough Assembly, told the New York Times that the problem was not so much about the fact that people were using wood-burning stoves, but that it was a case of air inversion that causes air particles to remain and settle in the area.

“We have a weather problem, we have inversions here that trap air, and it’s something that can’t be solved.”

Roberts went on to say that the people in the interior of Alaska tended to be more independent.

“They came up here to get away from the regulatory environment that’s down in the lower 48, so they definitely see the E.P.A. as coming after wood stoves and trying to cut out that kind of independent lifestyle where you can live off the grid.”

The question that seems to be being overlooked is what the residents are going to use to heat their homes if the EPA, a regulatory bureaucracy that does not answer to the American people, decides to fine them into oblivion for choosing to do so.