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.

Tell others about this blog!

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Tell Others About This Blog!

Tell Others About This Blog!

Do you like smoky air? Do you like coming home and having your entire house reek of wood smoke? Do you like it when your couch and curtains smell like burnt wood? Do you like watching your children breathe smoky air while playing in the yard? Do you like air so smoky that it burns your sinus passages and makes your eyes water? Do you like wood smoke so heavy that it is like walking in a cloud? Do you like having to change your clothes and take a shower because stepping outside for two minutes leaves your entire body reeking of burnt wood?

That is what it is like in North Saint Paul, Minnesota. Other cities are like this, too. It is time for those of us who do not like frivolously polluted air to stand up for our rights.

One way to help us in that goal is to tell others about this blog. Please link to us and mention us to others you know or meet online.

Thank you.

Comments Reactivated

I decided to re-enable commenting on this blog. If you have something to say, leave a comment. Threats to me and my family will certainly not be approved. They may be reported to the authorities who can easily track you down. So don't bother threatening me. There are many other people who feel the same way as I do. Many of them are too shy to speak up. But there is safety in numbers. We will not be stopped!

7 comments:

  1. Being a fellow 55109 resident I am able to relate to your blog, yet I must admit, I am guilty of having the occasional recreational fire myself. We do have a nice underground fire ring in our back yard; it’s hard not to take advantage on a cool summer or fall evening. However, I’ve noticed a couple of my neighbors are pyromaniacs and have fires and parties quite frequently. I live on a block that has 7 houses on the south side of the street. Any given Friday night you will see 4-5 fires burning the backyards. One is a carpenter and he likes to bring all the scrap wood home from his job and burn it in the backyard (daily). I admit the wood smell does get annoying after a while! Great Blog, makes me laugh.

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  2. We have exactly the same "hell on earth" in San Luis Obispo County, which has just been described as "the happiest place to live." Not so. We have the second-highest rate of cancer in the state and our air is worse than that of Los Angeles - because of constant wood smoke.
    The world is run by those who lack the ability to think in any kind of logical fashion.

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  3. All these people complaining about how bad the air is. I sit on my deck every evening and smell nothing but fresh air blowing off the lake. No.St.Paul in a GREAT place to live. And for all the people complaining move to St.Paul or Minneapolis. And then you'll be able to cry about the smell. This is the most peaceful neighborhood I've ever lived in. Maybe you shouldn't talk about where some people have lived there whole lives. Because we don't want to hear it.

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  4. Jennifer, I thank you for leaving a comment. I was over by Silver Lake the past three evenings and found smoky air each time. It was smoky Aug. 8 from a bonfire near 19th Ave. and Henry St., it was a little smoky Aug. 9 on Poplar just east of Lake Blvd. and it was very smoky at Silver Lake beach last night the 10th from a bonfire somewhere in the area. I can find smoke just passing through the area so if you want me to believe you have never experienced smoky air where you live I'm not buying what you are selling. If you live on the lake, you have a buffer between homes on the other side of the lake that we do not enjoy. We are right in the middle of a residential area and are surrounded by hundreds of homes. Almost every evening a few out of those hundreds of homes are burning. That is why our air is so smoky. We have more homes around us than you do so you may not have smoky air as often. When I go out looking for smoke I usually find it around Silver Lake. The area around Silver Lake is polluted with wood smoke regularly. Since we live in North St. Paul, we have every right to complain about the polluted air we are force to breathe against our will. When we came to this city there was never any wood smoke in the air except during wintertime. We would have never moved here if we knew it was going to get like it has been the past several years.

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  5. I hate the smoke smell. Once in awhile it is okay but nightly just to get rid of branches coming down in windstorms is not good.
    I have lived here since 1965 and watched the city go downhill! There is a lot more problems other than just smoke. How about a race buying houses and letting them go to hell and than walking away. They sit vacant for years. How about parking on front yards even though it is against code?

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    Replies
    1. How about houses that were once nice going to hell, being walked away from, banks holding on for what reason, I don't have a Clue! People wanting to gut and restore them. Banks don't want to okay that.. especially when there is mold 3/4 of the way up the walls and all the paneling deteriorated on touch. The outside of these houses are rotting. Someone wants to buy them, gut them and then RENT them out?? What are they all thinking! What abandoned this house was Asian. With 5 bedrooms, in a neighborhood plaqued by walkaways what makes you think it won't be inhabited by that again? There are 2 houses on this block, the first afore one mentioned and another one sold and bought by them. This one had been totally redone after a fire and beautifully done. Guess what bought it... guess what the yard and probably the inside looks like a mere two yrs later. This city NEEDS to restrict rentals to apts bldgs ONLY! Maybe that would help stablize the community to start with. Etc, etc etc! Oh and ENFORCE the codes to start with!

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  6. read this after being refused a free tree on earth day. i commented that the trees helped clear the air and i would plant one on the trail that ran thru the city. even though they had extras 'their words' they wouldnt give me one because i lived across the street in an adjoining town! It's hypocrisy! look at the number of historic buildings torn down too. for what? a dirt parking lot? Macs diner lives on in my heart!

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