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, July 17, 2011

Saturday 07/16/2011 Air Pollution

It was a hot and humid day. The air was hazy from the moisture in the air all day long. North St. Paul experienced some flash flooding today because of heavy rain in the morning. The rain started sometime prior to 5 AM and the downpour lasted a few hours. This could have been the longest duration of heavy rain I have seen in my lifetime. Water was pooling in our yard because of the heavy rain and yesterday's rain that left the ground saturated. I was concerned that the basement would get water in it. It didn't. The roads around here did not flood. There was flooding in the area of McKnight and Highway 36 and I read that 12th Ave. flooded as well. Kare 11 reported that the water on McKnight under the Highway 36 bridge was as high as the tops of the cars that stalled. I have some links to news stories you can view with pictures and video.

Here is a picture of the defunct Tap & Grill restaurant parking lot flooded down by the North St. Paul Target store and the Postal Credit Union bank. That's from this Kare 11 story. Here is a Kare 11 and a KSTP story with some video from a helicopter of the flooded area of McKnight Rd. & Highway 36.

There was no wood or yard waste smoke today because of high heat and humidity. When it gets really hot there are not many people having bonfires. I could see somebody burning off in the distance this afternoon around 5:15 PM. The burner was producing a huge cloud of smoke that hung in the sky at tree level. None of the smoke made it down this way. I do not know what was being burned. Grills don't produce that much smoke. The temperature at 5PM was 91 degrees and it was very muggy. It was a good night for fresh air if you like it hot and humid.