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, September 5, 2010

Sunday 09/05/2010 Air Pollution

12:15 AM: Moderate to strong wood smoke continues. The air continues to be extremely smoky. The air reeks. There is no chance of opening a window for a little fresh air. There is no chance of stepping outside for a breath of fresh air because there is none!

2:10 AM: Moderately strong wood smoke continues. Very smoky air all night long

4:00 AM: Moderate wood smoke continues. How long is this going to last? The air has been smoky for most of the past nine hours. I turned on the TV to get the temperature before heading back to bed. 51 degrees at this time in St. Paul.

6:00 AM: Faint wood smoke continues. It is a smoky, smoldering smell. The air reeks! You do not want this stinky air in your home. Cigarette smoke is less offensive than this.

6:45 AM: Very faint smoldering wood smoke continues.

7:00 AM: A very faint trace of smoke remains in the air. The air is mostly clear at this time. Thank God! The nightmare is ending. If we are lucky, we will get ten to twelve hours of fresh air before the wood smoke starts again.

Do you want to live in a city like this? This is how we live our lives more often than not. It is a nightmare.

12:44 PM: Faint to light grass smoke. Somebody is burning yard waste. I could smell the smoke coming in through the windows as I was reading the paper. The smoke did not last too long.

1:13 PM: Faint grass smoke coming in the windows on the breeze. It did not last long.

2:15 PM: Very faint wood smoke at this time. Somebody somewhere is burning wood. The smoke did not last more than a couple of minutes. The burning stopped or the breeze shifted direction. Often in North St. Paul people will burn wood then throw their grass clippings on top of it. They use the legal wood smoke pollution to hide their illegal grass burning. Or they could be burning brush.

It was another smoky hell of an evening in North St. Paul, MN. When isn't the air smoky? If it rains or is hot during the evening hours we might not have wood smoke. Otherwise, the air is smoky every evening in this nightmare town.

5:00 PM: No wood smoke. 70 degrees.

6:00 PM: No wood smoke.

7:00 PM: No wood smoke.

8:00 PM: Faint wood smoke at this time. Close the windows.

9:00 PM: Light wood smoke.

10:00 PM: Moderate wood smoke. The air is very smoky at this time. Horrible smoky air. Do you want to breathe smoky air every day of your life? North St. Paul sucks!

10:30 PM: Light to moderate wood smoke. It's still good and smoky outside. Off to bed.

11:50 PM: Light wood smoke continues.

When I got up again around 2:15 AM there was a very faint smokiness lingering in the air. Do you want to live in a city like this? Do you want to be a prisoner in your own home?