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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Monday, July 19, 2010

Monday 07/19/2010 Air Pollution

The nightmare from hell continued well into the morning hours.

12:15 AM: Moderate wood smoke continues. The air is very smoky outside. Our air conditioner will stay on all night. Hey you people at city hall, do you now know why we cannot open our windows at night and must run our air conditioners? Do you think we want to breathe very smoky air in bed?

1:30 AM: Moderate wood smoke continues.

6:15 AM: Very faint smoldering wood smoke remains in the air. Over 13 hours after the wood smoke started yesterday evening wood smoke is still in the air.

Do you want to live in a city like this? Do you want to pay over $2,000 a year in property tax to live under these conditions?

4:10 PM: No smoke. 80 degrees, cloudy.

7:15 PM: No wood smoke yet. I have a feeling the air will be smoky tonight. Our air conditioning is off and our windows are open. The wood burners in this nightmare city could not possibly let us enjoy an evening without smoky air, could they? 80 degrees. The sun came out a couple hours ago. We were supposed to have some rain this evening. But we will not, unfortunately.

8:00 PM: No wood smoke. I sat outside about this time for an hour as the evening air cooled. The air was fresh. There was nothing in it. The only annoyance during this time was the sound of someone in the distance using a table saw or other type of electric saw. It was a beautiful evening, a beautiful evening to be alive. Here in Minnesota, we get only four or five months of fair weather per year. You must enjoy what you can. As I watched the sun fade from the sky, I took several deep breaths of fresh air, savoring every one. The air tends to get smoky at dusk. It could be many hours before I can go outside and take another deep breath of air. You never know in North St. Paul. Wood burners have all the rights. We have none.

9:00 PM: No wood smoke or grass smoke. Fresh air continues! The temperature fell to 73 degrees during this hour. When I was outside, I heard my neighbor's air conditioner running. The air is not humid this evening and is cooling quickly. It seems such a waste to run the air conditioner and bear the expense of the electricity and miss out on the wonderful fresh air. But my neighbor knows all too well how polluted the air is in this city just as we do. You never know when somebody at one of the hundreds of homes around here is going to start burning. All it takes is one smoky bonfire to blanket an entire neighborhood with heavy wood smoke pollution.

10:00 PM: Wonderful fresh air continues.

10:30 PM: Fresh air continues. Off to bed. Close the windows.

I woke up shortly after midnight and the air was still nice and fresh. I did not open the windows. We have experienced late night burning too many times to do that. When your house is flooded with wood smoke in the middle of the night, it is very difficult to sleep. When it gets inside your home, you cannot get rid of it. The air inside is almost as smoky as the air outside. It is misery.

We were very fortunate to enjoy an evening without wood smoke. Especially when last night was smoky as hell.