Recreational Fires Must Be Eliminated

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WELCOME TO HELL ON EARTH

The air is smoky from burning wood in North St. Paul, MN, almost every evening. It is a nightmare. What used to be a nice place to live has become a living hell.

WARNING: If you buy a house in North St. Paul, MN, you will regret it! It may be the biggest, most expensive mistake you ever make. You will breathe smoky air almost every day of your life in this town. This is not an exaggeration. The wood smoke in this town gets heavy and gets heavy often. When you want to get out of this dump of a town, how many people do you think are going to want to buy a house in a city where heavy air pollution every night is normal and clean air is rare? This blog gets thousands of visitors every year. The word is out: North St. Paul is a horrible place to live!

Fresh air is very rare around here. If you are considering moving to North St. Paul or buying a home here, I strongly recommend that you do not do it no matter how good of a price you get. The only way you will be happy in this town is if you love breathing smoky air almost every day. North St. Paul, MN, is a horrible place to live because of the smoky air!

Burning wood, grass, leaves, paper, cardboard, and sometimes plastic, construction materials, and chemicals, if it is combustible it gets burned in North St. Paul and you are going to breathe it.

The air was smoky 25 out of 31 evenings in July 2009. We had 37 hours of continuous wood smoke in the air Aug. 29th - 31st. There was wood smoke in the air 19 consecutive evenings from Aug. 21st to Sept. 8th. It rained heavily on Aug. 20th, providing the only relief we got from wood smoke for almost three weeks.

Is this a good way to live? No. It is a horrible way to live. Take it from someone who knows. Breathing smoky, polluted air every day is misery.

Every day in this city several people are having recreational fires. Every evening the air is filled with the stench of burning wood. I am one person sick and tired of breathing smoky air every day. Is it too much to ask to be able to breathe fresh air in your own home?

Who is responsible for this wood smoke nightmare? The four city council members are responsible. Council members Jan Walczak, Bob Bruton, Terry Furlong, and Dave Zick have refused to do anything about this wood smoke problem. They don't care if you have a child with asthma. They don't care if you have to live like a shut-in because the air is so polluted. They don't care if your sinuses burn because the wood smoke is so heavy.

Our four Council members have defended the rights of a small percentage of households to burn wood daily over the rights of all the rest of us to breathe.

You have no right to breathe under Walczak, Bruton, Furlong, and Zick. Burners have the right to burn wood 49 hours a week recreationally. The rest of us have no rights at all.

If you are considering purchasing real estate in the city of North Saint Paul, Minnesota (55109), factor this blog carefully into your decision. Buying a home in this city means that your kids will breathe smoky air while playing in the yard almost every day. Your baby will breathe smoky air in her crib should you leave the windows open around your house. If you leave your windows open you will wake up in the middle of the night choking on smoky air.

Perhaps worst of all, your utility rates will be high because you will have to run the air conditioner instead of leaving the windows open on a cool summer evening. You have no other choice because almost every night the air is too smoky to breathe in this city. Consider this blog your warning.

North St. Paul, Minnesota, is a wonderful community other than the wood smoke. If we could restore fresh air like we used to enjoy, life would be happy again. But that is not going to happen any time soon.

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

The Burning Log

This blog is going to serve as a document of the kind of conditions we have to endure as residents of North St. Paul, Minnesota. If you want to live in this city you must love the smell of burning wood, or else you will be very unhappy.

The past few years have seen a dramatic rise in both the number and frequency of recreational fires. As recently as ten years ago recreational burning of wood was rare. For the past three or four years it has become an almost daily occurrence. Rare is it that we have a day with fresh air unpolluted by the stench of unnecessarily burned wood.

As a result of daily recreational fires living in this city has become unbearable. If you are considering moving to North Saint Paul, MN, you should be aware that these are the conditions you will have to contend with.

I am not the only one tired of constantly breathing smoky air in this city.

Date Time Smoke
6/15/2008 11:30 AM Somebody was burning grass starting at 11:30 AM followed by wood. Smokiness was constant and persisted all evening past 9 PM. It is Father's Day today, many people are burning wood. Slept with windows closed.
6/16/2008 7:00 PM Someone unknown burning. Had to close windows.
6/17/2008 8:00 PM Someone again burning wood. Had to close windows and leave them closed all night.
6/18/2008 9:30 PM Someone unknown started a fire at around 9:30 PM. Had to close windows. Smoky all night long. Mild smokiness persisted until 5 AM the next morning.
6/19/2008 5:30 PM Someone unknown started burning at around 5:30 PM. Smoky for the next 3 hours or so. After that it was a smoke free night. Able to open windows. At last, an opportunity to cool down the house at night! Thank God for fresh air!
6/20/2008 5:30 PM Neighbor down the street started a very smoky fire around 5:30 PM. It smelled like wood smoke with burning grass thrown in for good measure. Very strong stench of smoke. Had to close windows and turn on air conditioning. Fire lasted for about 3 hours. At 9:00 PM another neighbor started a recreational fire. Had to leave windows closed all night long. At 7 AM the next morning a very faint scent of burnt wood could still be detected.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 17, 2008 at 7:40 AM

    Living in NSP you need to realize there are legal commercial trash burners, one example is the High School. We often wake up at 1 AM to "smell the smoke".

    ReplyDelete
  2. North St. Paul ResidentJuly 17, 2008 at 7:51 PM

    Thank you for your comment.

    That's a shame to have to wake up in the middle of the night to the smell of burning trash.

    I've noticed a few times during the day when I've been around that it smells like burning paper around Richardson Elementary school. I suspected that maybe the school was burning. Maybe it was coming from North High?

    I can't say that I have ever smelled that burning where I am located. I just noticed it passing by the school a couple of times earlier this spring.

    I cannot imagine why in this era that a school would be allowed to burn waste. It is air pollution. It doesn't seem fair to have to burden you with the smoke from burning waste just because the school wants to save a few dollars on trash removal.

    ReplyDelete

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