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, May 30, 2009

Saturday 05/30/2009 Burning

1:30 AM: Faint odor of burnt wood lingers in the air. We had rain sprinkles earlier. The options we have are to open the windows and cool the house down before bed or sleep in a warm, stuffy house until morning. I guess we'll have to live with the faint burnt wood smell.

You cannot possibly imagine how much I would love to live in a city with fresh air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is what North St. Paul used to be like 10 years ago. It hasn't been that way in years.

4:30 PM: Air is smoky again. I truly hate the city of North St. Paul. Living here is pure hell. A decade ago living here was nice. Not anymore. The wood smoke is sickeningly sweet. I wonder if someone is cooking over wood. Most people grill using propane or charcoal. This is wood smoke. Wood smoke is wood smoke, it stinks all the same.

6:30 PM: Moderately strong wood smoke.

7:30 PM: Faint wood smoke. Could the wood burning be done for the evening?

9:00 PM: Strong wood smoke. The smoke is so strong it burns your nose. The air outside reeks of burning wood. You cannot take a breath without inhaling that stench!

10:00 PM: Strong wood smoke continues. Horrible smoky air! Can't open the windows, can't sit outside, can't do a damn thing but sit in a stuffy house and wish to God you didn't have to live like this!

10:30 PM: Air is still strongly smoky. That's 6 hours of smoky air this evening.

It was a good idea to mention North St. Paul Crazy Days in my post yesterday. I got 12 visitors today as a result. Those people were searching for information on Crazy Days and they found this blog.

Crazy Days has been renamed "Slice of Summer" and takes place on May 29th and 30th in downtown North St. Paul. The North St. Paul classic car show is called the "History Cruze". It starts on Friday, June 5th and takes place every Friday night until Sept. 18th.

I got an email from someone in Illinois who is battling the same thing in his hometown that we are here. Keep up the fight. Fresh air is worth fighting for. Hopefully your city leaders will be more helpful than mine are. I don't see how any local politician could support smoky, polluted air in his or her own community when only a small percentage of people burn. Oddly enough, some do. How can anyone support polluted, smoky air in our age of environmental awareness?

11:30 PM: Stench of burnt wood lingers in the air. The air is foul and polluted. It seems like the burning is done with the odor being from the remnants of burnt wood.

That's 7 hours of foul air this evening. It is currently 60 degrees outside, nice and cool. It is 74 degrees inside. I would love nothing more than to open the windows and enjoy the cool air. Doing so would bring in the stink of burnt wood. I don't want the whole house to smell like that.