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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Sunday, August 2, 2009

Sunday 08/02/2009 Air Pollution

3:00 AM: The air reeks of wood smoke and burnt wood. I woke up around this time and hoped to open the windows to cool down this stuffy house. The air is so polluted -- as usual -- we can't! We are prisoners in our own home at three in the morning! This city is a nightmare!

5:00 AM: Faint trace of burnt wood odor lingers in the air. That makes over 11 hours of constant foul polluted air. This is normal in North St. Paul, MN. This is how the city council forces us to live.

7:00 AM: Air is fresh. Time to finally open the windows after having them closed for the past 13 hours.

On a side note, this blog got 497 unique visitors last month. This isn't a record but it isn't bad. People doing broad searches for "city of North St. Paul" and "North St. Paul, MN" are finding this blog ranked in the third and fourth positions on the Google search engine. People searching for real estate and homes for sale are finding this blog, too. Anyone thinking about plunking down $175,000 - $200,000 or more for a house should know how terribly polluted the air is in this city. Imagine paying over $2,000 a year in property taxes to breathe smoky, polluted air every day. We even got a visitor for the search "North St. Paul a good place to live?". The answer to that question is: No, this city is not a good place to live. It is a terrible place to live because of the daily smoke pollution the city council forces us to endure. It used to be a great place to live 10 years ago when nobody burned wood. These days, it is rare to have more than two or three days a month without wood smoke in the evenings. Usually, you have to close your windows and leave them closed all night long because the wood smoke pollution is so heavy.

North St. Paul could become a good place to live again if the city council ever gets rid of this wood smoke pollution. Until then, my advice to anybody considering purchasing a home here is to avoid this city like the polluted nightmare that it is. Moving to North St. Paul could be the biggest mistake you ever make. Consider yourself warned by someone who knows.

4:30 PM: Intermittent faint wood smoke coming from a distance. Cloudy, 80 degrees, spotty rain showers moving in.

5:15 PM: Very faint wood smoke. You can detect a trace of wood smoke if the wind is right.

7:00 PM: No wood smoke.

8:00 PM: No wood smoke. It rained briefly between 7 PM and this time.

9:30 PM: No wood smoke. Last check of the evening. I woke up again around 3 AM to see the ground was wet. It rained again. The air at 3 AM was free of wood smoke. Flickers of lightning filled the sky.

Thanks to the rain we enjoyed an evening with very little wood smoke.