Groups say EPA?s Clean Air Act rules should prohibit burning fo

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Groups say EPA’s Clean Air Act rules should prohibit burning fo

Groups say EPA’s Clean Air Act rules should prohibit burning forests for “green” energy

For Immediate Release

www.energyjustice.net



CONTACT: Attorney Meg Sheehan, 800-729-1363 [email protected]

Dr. William Sammons, 781-799-0014 [email protected]
Cheryl Johncox, 866-648-7337 [email protected]
Denny Haldeman, 423 332 0414 [email protected]>

A national network of health, social justice, community well-being, and forest protection organizations opposed to burning trees and trash for so-called “clean and green” energy, today vowed to challenge U.S. EPA’s November 10, 2010 Clean Air Act guidance as it relates to “biomass.” The group also voiced sharp disagreement with Secretary Vilsack’s support for burning America’s forests for electricity, expressed in a USDA Press Release November 10.

In Massachusetts, Meg Sheehan of Biomass Accountability Project said, “We applaud EPA for moving forward on greenhouse gas regulation despite industry criticism, but the agency’s claim that burning “biomass” could qualify as “best available control technology” for greenhouse gas emissions is contrary to established science. Burning wood biomass for electricity emits 50% more greenhouse gases per unit of energy than coal and is horribly inefficient. The Clean Air Act is supposed to ensure that all Americans have healthy air to breathe. Burning biomass is contrary to that goal,” Sheehan added.

According to pediatrician William Sammons, biomass burning emits the most toxic chemicals known to science, including deadly dioxin, mercury, fine particulate matter, and others. “These emissions cause asthma, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses in children as well as adults, and should never qualify as the “cleanest” technology under our Clean Air Act,” Sammons said. Over 77,000 doctors, the American Lung Association, Massachusetts Medical Society, North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians and others oppose burning wood biomass on health grounds.

In Ohio, plans to convert coal plants to burning trees threaten both forests and public health, according to Buckeye Forest Council Executive Director Cheryl Johncox. “Ten coal fired power plants in Ohio plan to burn over 25 million tons of wood a year to generate energy – that’s one in ten of our trees which would result in the clearing of Ohio’s forests in a decade,” she said. “Cutting down forests, which absorb greenhouse gases, is not a climate solution but a climate disaster, and it’s happening now, not in the future,” she said. “We urge EPA to ensure that biomass burning is not allowed to be implemented as “best available control technology” for greenhouse gases,” Johncox added.

"It is unconscionable for the USDA and Secretary Vilsack to promote economic and environmental subsidies for an industry which will result in the release of “a carbon bomb” that will last for decades,” said Denny Haldeman, a spokesperson for the Anti- Biomass Incineration Forest Protection Campaign. “The biomass incineration industry is carbon intensive, unsustainable, and dirty, and it cannot exist without massive tax-payer subsidies,” he added. “The “best available control technology” for clean air and reduced carbon emissions is more forests and less burning, not biomass incineration," said Haldeman.






Wood burning creates top cancer risk in Oregon's air, EPA says
Excerpted from the article by Scott Learn, The Oregonian


Pollution from burning wood in stoves, fireplaces and elsewhere is the top cancer risk in Oregon's air, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis.

Burning wood and other organic material creates a greater risk than even benzene, a carcinogen belched by cars and trucks in the tens of thousands of tons each year, the analysis indicates.

By contrast, the main toxins from incomplete combustion of burning wood -- a class of chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (you can smell them) -- measure in the low hundreds of tons a year from Oregon's residential sources.

"The PAHs are nasty things," said Ted Palma, an EPA scientist who led the agency's latest National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment, released last month.

The EPA assessment, based on 2002 emissions data, ranked Oregon's air high in cancer risk. The state placed third highest in the nation in the number of people -- about 152,000 -- living in census tracts with a cancer risk of 100 in a million, the EPA's benchmark level of concern.

But that's largely because Oregon has done a far better job documenting the generation of wood smoke, Palma said, including surveying residents three times since 2000 to gauge actual wood stove and fireplace use. "If the other 49 states did as good a job as Oregon," Palma said, "Oregon wouldn't be at the top."

Based on the EPA's analysis, other states might want to start paying heed.

Pollution from wood burning helped push 45 census tracts in Clackamas, Jackson, Multnomah and Washington counties above the EPA's overall risk benchmark, accounting for a third or more of the overall air cancer risk in those counties.

Wood burning is particularly popular for home heating in southwest Oregon's Jackson County, the state's surveys indicate. It's less popular in urban counties such as Multnomah but still adds up because of the higher population, close proximity of neighbors, and heavier use of fireplaces, which spew far more pollutants than stoves.

The EPA's risk benchmark is based on 100 cancer incidents among 1 million people exposed continuously over a lifetime.By comparison, the EPA says one out of three Americans -- 330,000 in a million -- will contract cancer during their lives when all causes are taken into account, including smoking and poor nutrition. Also by comparison, the national risk of contracting cancer from radon exposure, also not included in the analysis, is about 2,000 in a million.
 
These idiots wont stop with any concession.

They suffer from mental illness and have no grasp or concern with reality.

The crime is the number of politicians that are all to willing to accomodate them, as the green industry shifts power and wealth in thier advantage.

The Green industry is a globalist empowerment front, and folks that ignore them, are ignoring one of the greatest threats to our sovereignity since the Soviets.

Stay safe!
Dingeryote
 
So supposedly 1 person out of 10,000 will contract cancer because of wood smoke inhalation over the course of a lifetime while 3300 out of 10,000 will supposedly contract cancer from radon exposure over a lifetime and the environmentals want the EPA to crack down on wood burning. Why don't they concentrate on Radon which is 3300 times more dangerous than wood smoke? Logically it makes no sense to go after such a statistically insignificant threat when a statistically huge threat is right in your face. How can environmentals expect to be taken seriously by any rational person with an ounce of common sense?
 
These people never come out and tell you what their utopia really is, because they know it's so ridiculous that no one would listen to them. If we avoided everything that could cause cancer, we would live in a bubble and only have regulated amounts of sunlight.
People have been staying warm by burning wood since the beginning of time. I'll take my chances.
 
I don't particularly like the idea of feeding our forests to the power plants either unless it's waste like slash piles. If they're burning something let it be coal that's mined responsibly. No mountain top removal or strip mines. Hold their noses to the grind stone when it comes to mine safety and pollutant control.

I'm no tree hugger, but some reasonable controls are... well... reasonable.

Ian
 
Thanks for the sane comments, Haywood.

Maybe things are different back east, but I'm not aware of any proposals to harvest and burn wood for energy out west.

On the other hand, western loggers do routinely burn slash, to control insects, or to stimulate the growth of fire-loving species like douglas fir.

I wouldn't mind seeing some of that slash utilized to make power. If it's going to be burned anyway, why not do something useful with it ?

That is what some of the anti-biofuel groups don't seem to understand -- that slash gets burned regardless.

As far as the health hazard goes, every summer western skies are filled with smoke from wildfires. Anyone who lives in the west is going to be exposed to it. Then in the fall the slash is burned, and some years it gets out of control and burns until winter weather finally shuts it down. About the same time, grain farmers burn their stubble. I'm sure I breathe far more crap from wildfires and slash fires and field fires than from the occasional wood stove.

The EPA has its place, they just need to get their priorities straight.
 
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I don't particularly like the idea of feeding our forests to the power plants either unless it's waste like slash piles. If they're burning something let it be coal that's mined responsibly. No mountain top removal or strip mines. Hold their noses to the grind stone when it comes to mine safety and pollutant control.

I'm no tree hugger, but some reasonable controls are... well... reasonable.

Ian

I full heartedly agree with you and almost everone I know works for a strip mine. There should be better control. I hate strip mining. it takes away my wood cutting and off-roading areas:cry:
 
I don't know, but I suspect the thing preventing burning slash in a power plant being main stream is economics. You get a heck of a lot more BTUs out of a train car full of coal than you do wood chips and it probably costs about the same to transport. You probably end up playing a losing game financially transporting loads of chips.

Ian
 
Dingeryote has it right. The communists usurped the green movement with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall coming down. Cap and Trade? don't worry commrades, the EPA has a way of making that happen merely by making regulations, no legislation needed.
 
I full heartedly agree with you and almost everone I know works for a strip mine. There should be better control. I hate strip mining. it takes away my wood cutting and off-roading areas:cry:

I disagree, I think strip mines make some of the best outdoor recreation areas on earth when they are reclaimed and put back into the public hands. Around my area we have millions of acres of reclaimed strip mines which are now large wildlife refuges, 1000’s of the best fishing holes, great housing and subdivision developments, golf courses, very large hunting grounds, off road riding land, and much, much more.

I just happen to own a lot at a old strip mine where there is around 200 lots surrounding a large lake. I spend most all summer there, and when I get to my retirement age I will build a house there and live there. And there are many more developments like my small community all around us.

On the original post…. I think that power plants should not burn wood just due to the BTU factor, and the cost it will take for transportation, tree farming, ect… Leave the trees to us poor folks who like to heat our house with wood.
 
I disagree, I think strip mines make some of the best outdoor recreation areas on earth when they are reclaimed and put back into the public hands. Around my area we have millions of acres of reclaimed strip mines which are now large wildlife refuges, 1000’s of the best fishing holes, great housing and subdivision developments, golf courses, very large hunting grounds, off road riding land, and much, much more.

I just happen to own a lot at a old strip mine where there is around 200 lots surrounding a large lake. I spend most all summer there, and when I get to my retirement age I will build a house there and live there. And there are many more developments like my small community all around us.

On the original post…. I think that power plants should not burn wood just due to the BTU factor, and the cost it will take for transportation, tree farming, ect… Leave the trees to us poor folks who like to heat our house with wood.

while this is true they take away from the extreme aspect of wheeling. And around here when a strip is reclaimed they always gate it off. But they are good for when you can ride on em.
 
You probably end up playing a losing game financially transporting loads of chips.

Ian

Kind of like the game they play now with corn ethanol? It requires more energy to produce than it generates, it uses more oil to produce than gasoline does, it pollutes more than gas, and it costs more than gas.

I gave up trying to assign logic or business sense to environmentals, it's a waste of energy. Wood is actually carbon neutral because if it wasn't burned it would release the same amount of carbon through decomposition lying on the forest floor. And if dead wood wasn't harvested forest fires would be even bigger than they are now causing more smoke in a more concentrated fashion.
 
I disagree, I think strip mines make some of the best outdoor recreation areas on earth when they are reclaimed and put back into the public hands. .

How much would it cost if you didn't have to reclaim it? Making a giant scar in the earth pretty is like putting makeup on a pig. You're still kissing a pig. :)

Ian
 
Making a giant scar in the earth pretty is like putting makeup on a pig. You're still kissing a pig.

Ian

Don't know about you boy's in Kentucky, but here, I don't put makeup on a pig, and I sure in the hell don't kiss them

You weren't in the movie deliverance where you?
 
Dingeryote has it right. The communists usurped the green movement with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall coming down. Cap and Trade? don't worry commrades, the EPA has a way of making that happen merely by making regulations, no legislation needed.

+1 It's already being done:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/science/earth/24epa.html

Probably the first (and last) time I cite the NYT.
Facts? We don't need no stinking facts...
 
Don't know about you boy's in Kentucky, but here, I don't put makeup on a pig, and I sure in the hell don't kiss them

You weren't in the movie deliverance where you?

You should get out more. Em air piggys is sweee eeeee eeee t. They get mean after they have the younguns though. No such thing as shared custody.
 
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