An outdoor wood boiler, photographed by Flickr user julianmeade.
After a long, hot summer of discontent, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has given up on outlawing old outdoor wood boilers. The agency is rolling out regulations that tighten up the emissions requirements for new OWBs, a low-cost but often high-polluting method of heating popular in rural areas.
In response to public outcry, the new regs allow existing boilers to keep boiling, albeit with a few new restrictions. On Monday, the state Environmental Board will consider the regs at a 2pm meeting in Albany. If approved, the regulations could then go into effect in November.
Back in the spring, the DEC was aiming to phase out all boilers that didn't meet its new emissions requirements. (Long term, the DEC says, OWBs can cause asthma, heart disease, and cancer.)
But that proposal led to stiff resistance from farmers and rural communities, many of which have been relying on OWBs for years and to whom a few particulates in the air are a fair price for keeping warm, as one farmer told YNN:
"For us, this is in the middle of our farm," Borden said. "We've got over 700 acres here, none of my neighbors are going to have any problems, if anybody has any problems, it's us."
Over the summer, the Delaware County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution calling for the DEC to grandfather in old OWBs under the new emissions standards, and the New York State Senate even weighed in, passing a bill that left most of the regulation of older-model OWBs to local municipalities. (That bill is now in committee before the General Assembly.)
The issue came up in communities across the Catskills. In Rosendale, which has had its own local wood-boiler law on the books for over a year, locals haven't had to much friction over the issue, the Daily Freeman reported:
“It went quite well,” town Code Enforcement Officer David Massimi said recently. “There are nine outdoor wood boilers in town. The heating season ended April 15. We got complaints that two people were continuing to use their stoves (after April 15), both people were reminded of the time frames, and both stoves were put out immediately.”
In Catskill, however, OWBs pitted neighbor against neighbor, according to the Daily Mail:
Federman, a resident of Bogart Road, said a neighbor’s outdoor wood boiler is only yards away from his property and he is stuck coping with the heavy wood smoke wafting over his land. “I’d like to get my yard back,” he said. “I’d like to be able to enjoy my yard in the summer without having to deal with the smoke.”
In Hobart, a local law over OWBs had neighbors fighting with a village trustee, according to the Mountain Eagle:
Trustee James Barr stepped down from the board during the discussion because he is the subject of the complaint. Residents Mary Lou Annarilla and Jim Shortell said smoke is coming into their residences and disrupting their quality of life.
People even weighed in on the Watershed Post. In April, a commenter on our site wrote:
We have used an outside wood furnace for several years. It is our only source of heat and hot water. Now DEC wants it shut down in Oct. 2011. We live in a very rural upstate area with no close neighbors. Another case of DEC having way too much power and punishing all for the deeds of a few.
By August, the DEC had received over 2,000 comments about its proposed law, which, a spokesperson told the Daily Freeman, is quite a lot.
The new regulations released this week, which you can read on the DEC's website, give in to most -- but not all -- of the demands from OWB-lovers across the state. The biggest concession is that old OWBs can stay. However, they must be fitted with an 18-foot smokestack and for the most part can't be used during the summer. Here's the pertinent language:
Section 247.10 Requirements for existing outdoor wood boilers.
(a) Effective October 1, 2011, all existing outdoor wood boilers shall be equipped with a permanent stack extending a minimum of 18 feet above ground level. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Department may require that the permanent stack extend up to two feet above the peak of any roof structure within 150 feet of the OWB when necessary to adequately disperse smoke emitted from an outdoor wood boiler.
(b) No person shall operate an existing outdoor wood boiler in the Northern Heating Zone between June 1 and August 31 of each year or between May 15 and September 30 of each year elsewhere in the State, except as follows:
(1) An existing outdoor wood boiler that is a model certified by the department pursuant to Section 247.8 of this Part and sited 100 feet or more from the nearest property boundary line is not subject to this subdivision;
(2) An existing outdoor wood boiler sited 500 feet or more from the nearest property boundary line and 1000 feet or more from a school is not subject to this subdivision; or
(3) An existing outdoor wood boiler located on contiguous agricultural lands larger than five acres and sited 500 feet or more from the nearest residence not served by the existing outdoor wood boiler or 500 feet or more from a property boundary line that is not on agricultural land and 1000 feet or more from a school is not subject to this subdivision.
This solution leaves some unsatisfied. The New York Farm Bureau is not a fan. Today, it posted a call to arms on its website for its members to rally against the latest version of the regs:
DEC is calling for a chimney stack height of 18 feet to be mandatory on all boilers by October 1, 2011. The height would be costly to install and dangerous in some areas in New York where high winds are common. The stack height requirements could cause some owners of the units to run afoul of local zoning laws governing structure height. DEC is also proposing to eliminate the use of boilers in Northern New York between June 1 and August 31, under certain setback conditions, meaning some owners will not be able to heat water with boilers in those months, forcing them to use non-renewable, petroleum sources of energy. It’s worse for residents in the southern half of the state, where the ban will take place between May 15 and September 30.
