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, September 11, 2010

Saturday 09/11/2010 Air Pollution

It is a beautiful early fall day. As is typical in this city, there is some burning of yard waste. It was one hell of a smoky night. If you don't love wood smoke so heavy it makes you sick, you will not like living in North St. Paul.

3:23 PM: Faint to light grass smoke coming in the windows. Somebody is burning grass clippings. Why not? People burn so much wood in this nightmare city, you might as well burn whatever you can get your hands on. Burning encourages more burning. One person has a smoky bonfire, the next day a neighbor burns yard waste. The next evening someone else burns wood. That's why this city is as polluted as it is. The grass smoke did not last more than a few minutes, thankfully. It is windy at this time.

4:55 PM: Very faint grass and wood smoke coming in the windows. Breezy at this time. The burner is not near us.

5:15 PM: Very faint to faint wood smoke in the air. I wonder if someone may be grilling with wood. There is no cooking odor in the smoke. Someone could be burning tree branches. There is a lot of that in this city, too. 71 degrees, breezy, and beautiful except for the wood smoke in the air.

I expect this evening to be an incredibly smoky hell. In other words, it will be a normal evening in North St. Paul. Do you want to live in a city like this?

5:30 PM: Faint to light wood smoke. It smells like wood smoke in the house now like it would if somebody smoked a cigarette inside. Time to close up the windows for the night and hope the air is clear by morning. North St. Paul sucks! If we wanted smoky air inside the house we would buy some cigarettes and smoke them inside!

6:00 PM: Faint to light wood smoke continues in this horrible city. The air stinks. What a nightmare. The smoke is not from the grilling of food. Somebody in the distance is burning wood and letting it smolder. We encountered an area of wood smoke earlier when we were out shopping. I do not think that the smoke is from the same source. It isn't just our area that is smoky. It is smoky in many spots of the city regularly.

7:00 PM: Faint to light wood smoke continues. Two hours of smoky air already and we haven't even reached nightfall. It is going to be a long smoky hell of a night. No bonfires on Friday means there will be a lot of pent up pyromania tonight. The weather is beautiful. It would be a nice evening to sit outside if the air wasn't smoky! 70 degrees and sunny at this time.

7:15 PM: Light wood smoke at this time. It's getting smokier! Thanks a lot, city council. I first complained about the wood smoke TWO AND A HALF F****** YEARS AGO AND NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE ABOUT IT!

7:50 PM: Light to moderate wood smoke. It's getting smokier outside.

8:45 PM: Moderately strong wood smoke. It is very smoky outside. You cannot smell anything other than wood smoke. You do not want to be outside in air this smoky. Breathing the air is uncomfortable and your clothes will reek of smoke.

9:40 PM: Moderate wood smoke continues. The air continues to be very smoky.

10:30 PM: Moderate to strong wood smoke. It is extremely smoky outside! To give you an idea of how heavy the wood smoke is, we can smell wood smoke coming in around the windows. Even with all the windows closed up tight, air smoke infiltration is occurring. You cannot stop the air pollution from entering your home.

11:00 PM: Moderate to strong wood smoke continues. We are going to bed and dream of a city that is not controlled by idiots who make people breathe heavy air pollution!

Heavy wood smoke continued well after midnight.

North St. Paul, MN, is the shittiest, worst place to live in the world! Never in my life would I have imagined air pollution so heavy as it is in this town. I look forward to winter when there is less wood smoke in the air! Spring, summer, and fall are much smokier than winter in this city. You would think winter would be the smokiest. But it is the least smoky season around here. And the colder it gets, the less wood smoke there is in the air. That's how screwed up this city is.