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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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Thursday 06/09/2011 Air Pollution

The air pollution nightmare gets worse every year. Burning is starting earlier now than ever. By 5:45 PM two homes nearby were burning. As darkness arrives bonfires will start. If you make the mistake of buying a house in North St. Paul, MN, this is how you are going to live, too. This horrible air pollution is not confined to our neighborhood. The air is smoky all over the city. It keeps getting worse.

4:25 PM: Faint grass smoke. It's already starting.

4:55 PM: Light grass smoke. 66 degrees. Do you want to breathe grass smoke inside your home at the end of the day? You probably don't.

5:07 PM: Light wood smoke now. Grass followed by wood, I am pretty sure I know who is doing the burning. So I went out and found out that my hunch was correct. This frequent burner was burning grass last night, too. On the way back I was driving down a street and heard a crackling noise. I went around the block and found another home was burning. I do not know what they were burning. I could see flames from behind the garage.

There are two homes in the area burning before 6 PM. If it is smoky now, how bad is it going to get as the sun sets?

6:00 PM: Faint to light wood smoke. I hate North St. Paul!

7:00 PM: Light wood smoke continues and will likely continue for hours. Then the bonfires start.

Is this how you want to live? If not, do not purchase real estate in North St. Paul. When we moved here there was never any wood smoke and yard waste burning was infrequent. Now it is a nightmare.

7:45 PM: No smoke. The air is fresh.

8:00 PM: Faint wood smoke. The breeze must have shifted direction temporarily.

8:30 PM: Light wood smoke.

9:40 PM: Faint wood smoke varying with the breeze. This wood smoke smells different than that of earlier. It seems to be coming from a different direction. So many people burn these days the wood smoke comes at us from every which way.

10:30 PM: Very faint wood smoke varying with the breeze. A little rain drizzle fell shortly after this time. Not enough to stop the wood smoke unfortunately for all of us.

Midnight: Faint wood smoke continues shortly after midnight.

The air was smoky all night long. When I woke at around 2:15 AM the wood smoke was a little heavier than it was at midnight. This is why we almost never go to sleep with the windows open. This is also why almost everyone in the neighborhood runs their air conditioner on cool summer nights. The air is so damn smoky you cannot stand to breathe it! Do you want to breathe smoky air in bed at night? Nobody does.