I am talking about that wonderful air quality that is here after the winter rain washes the smog away. The air is fresh and those eastern hills are right THERE. This morning on my commute from Occ to Petaluma I saw once again smoke from people burning. As I drew closer, the eastern hills disappeared and my throat and lungs started to tighten and hurt. I cannot understand why anyone including the farmers ( Yes I do know about the right to farm) need to destroy the air quality in Sonoma County. I am DARN sick and tired of it. I know that in Santa Cruz county the county offers industrial size chippers for people to use , rather than burn. Clear days are getting far and few between except for those of us who live right on the coast. It seems a shame when cigarette smokers are on the outs but this can still happen! (don't tell it isn't the same,I would disagree with you). Lets stop burning!!
Teresa:pullshair:
Tars
01-29-2007, 08:40 PM
I cannot understand why anyone including the farmers ( Yes I do know about the right to farm) need to destroy the air quality in Sonoma County.
I'm one of those nasty burners, so I'll give you my perspective at least. My property adjoins the Laguna Santa Rosa. new Year's Eve 2005, my property was flooded. I'm located at the down-wind end of the Laguna. seemingly every old tire, empty agricultural oil can, rotten lumber, rotten tree trunks & limbs, & all manner of garbage & detritus that'd built up since the last flood was blown onto my property.
I soon learned that sonoma County makes no allowance for getting rid of flood flotsam. I bit the bullet and paid to dumpa all the tires that the lazy slobs dumped out in the Laguna. I had to pay to get rid of the old paint cans, gasoline cans, oils containers & other assorted metal & plastic crap that people tossed in the Laguna.
But I'll be DAMNED if I'm going to pay for all the rotten tree trunks & old lumber I "inherited" (from the wind). It would have cost me thousands of doillars - money I needed to repair flood damage. I pushed all the rotten wood into a big pile & burned it.
During a normal year I have a build up of several tons of tree fall, prunings, broken timbers, etc. Traditionally the owners here, like other aggies all around, have made a burn pile. I know ithe air belongs to all of us, so I try to salvage whatever I absolutely am able to, I've taken to cutting whatever I can into fireplace wood, so at least it heats houses here. I'm trying to figure out how I could finance & organize a "chipper co-op" on our road, so property owners here wouldn't be near as tempted to burn.
You may not believe it, but there is actually much less burning then there used to be. Like every other aspect of our society, sometimes the old ways are slow to change, but know that we are working on it.
Entrepeneurs pay heed: If I had the time & the capital to spare, I think I'd experiment with using vineyard prunings to weave into furniture, baskets, wreaths, etc., and sell them to retailers & on the web. I think there's the potential there for some real upscale gift & home design products. I'm sure it would be easy to find vineyard owners willing to give away their cuttings. It costs them labor to pile & burn them. Some of those vine wands are several feet in length, and usually they're very pliable. There's also an eager workforce here, who run out of work after the crush, who'd be glad to weave products for minimum wage.
Tars, I feel for you. It's a shame how much trash is dumped here in environmentalist Sonoma County. I'm one of those folks who pulls over to pick up the damnnable white plastic grocery bags along roads that turn into toxic powder after a few weeks in the sun. Those should be outlawed.
On the topic of burn piles, I have found that a large chipper makes the disposition of brush debris much less laborious than burning. It takes only a few minutes to turn a mountain of brush into Earth friendly mulch with a big machine (avoid the small hardware store models). The rental yards will let you haul one away for about $160 a day. If you line up a couple or three neighbors to share the time it becomes quite affordable. I would love to own one and if that's your goal as well, more POWER chipping to ya and your neighbors.
I own an eight horsepower Troybuilt chipper and it's a gem for most of my uses, but it sounds like you need one of the big boys. Try renting one before you commit to buying and give it a test run. You'll never want to sit around a stinky, potentially dangerous burn pile for hours again. You'll be all done and sipping a cold drink in a fraction the time it takes to burn. Plus you'll have mulch for your garden path and eventually a lot of rich compost.
Best of luck.
-Jeff
oldrose
01-30-2007, 09:15 AM
I am sorry Tars, for the position you are put in. That still doesn't mean that you can destroy the air quality of the thousands of people and particuarly children (ashma is on the sharp rise). I have lived in Sonoma County for over 30 years and the burning has diminished somewhat but so has the daily air quality and we seldom get good air quality days except right after the rain. Please get a chipper, or better yet join an agricultural group that buys one together and pay one of the people who "want work to work for minunum wage after the harvest" to run it if you cannot do the work yourself. Sell the chips and you have a small side business that pays for the labor.
Think of it as second hand smoke.
Teresa
"Mad" Miles
01-30-2007, 01:52 PM
I'm no environmental scientist, but based on years of reading I'm willing to bet that the bulk of air pollution in Sonoma County (and pretty much everywhere else in post-industrial societies like ours) is from automobile and truck exhaust.
In the early 90's once I was driving north to Chicago from the Shawnee Forest in southern Illinois. As we approached the city I wondered what fire was burning on the horizon. This was when we were about one hundred and fifty miles out. As we got closer the brown, yellow, gray bump in the lower atmosphere grew bigger and bigger and bigger, until it filled the entire horizon. Then we entered it and my suspicions were confirmed, it was just the normal crap in the air over a densely populated (and machined) urban area, on a still day without a lot of air movement. This was the air I and millions of others lived in day to day, month after month, year after year.
And where does all that particulate matter go when it rains? Into the watershed.
Much has been done in the last forty years to clean up emissions. But of course industry kept pollution controls as limited as politically possible while screaming about cost and economic competition. I just read in the paper that Bush is instituting a business watch-dog over the EPA and OSHA, so that no regulation that limits profitability gets issued or enforced.
"...each agency must have a regulatory office run by a political appointee to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries.
As a result the White House will have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to ensure the agencies carry out Bush's priorities.
This strengthens the hand of the White house in shaping rules that in the past were often generated by civil servants and scientific experts."
(PD 1/30/07 "Bush Tightens Controls On Rules, Page 1)
Prior to the current regime, as a country we had done pretty well compared to places like China where people heat and cook with charcoal and up until recently burned leaded gas.
Agricultural burning, while there may be a better way (chippers and mulching, dumping, piling and the slow decomposition of organic material, etc.) is a very small part of what we put in the air every day. It is just easy to spot because of the smoke cloud from a large fire when the fuel is damp.
Like the problem of oil depletion and energy self-sufficiency, the real solutions would require such a massive retooling, if not a radical change in technology and energy use patterns, that those who benefit from the current arrangement (and it could be argued that that is everybody with the exception of a small crunchy fringe willing to live in pre-industrial conditions) cannot see the profit in changing over. And committing to the massive required investment without a guaranteed return until the last second as the wolf bursts through the door is not something risk averse people who live comfortable lives easily do. And when that happens (the coming crunch)? Will it be too late or in the nick...?
You want better air quality? Cut emissions, especially from gross polluters such as deisel and gasoline engines and coal and oil fired electrical generating plants.
We here in SonomaCo are pretty lucky. The prevailing winds come from the ocean and move east, dumping our shit on the Sierra Nevadas and parts further east.
By the by, I'm an asthmatic, and I suffer more from pollen allergies here than anywhere else I've lived longterm (Northern Alabama, Southern California and Chicago). The human made particulate pollution here is pretty low in comparison to other more densely populated places with different climatological and geographical patterns.
The rise in childhood asthma is most marked in urban areas where children grow up next to major highways. So if you're a kid growing up on A Street in Santa Rosa, your health is likely to be a lot worse than if you're growing up in the West County.
Happy Breathing! Cough, cough, wheeze....
"M"M
oldrose
01-31-2007, 08:05 AM
I know all of that so don't preach to the converted. There is an appreciable difference in air quality during the burn season. It is dirty , heavy in particulates and a LOT of it happens on the same days, when things are still wet making the smoke worse (ever burn wet wood?) . That's when burn permits are allowed by the fire depts.So lets make sure that this area DOES stay fairly clean unlike the other places you have lived and we should make EVERY effort to keep it clean, not make excuses. Burning is a bad practice and needs to be stopped.Think globally, act locally.
Teresa
I'm no environmental scientist, but based on years of reading I'm willing to bet that the bulk of air pollution in Sonoma County (and pretty much everywhere else in post-industrial societies like ours) is from automobile and truck exhaust. {snip}
"Mad" Miles
01-31-2007, 02:03 PM
"I know all of that so don't preach to the converted. Teresa"
Dear Waccies,
Originally I wrote the following in reply to the email that this website sends automatically, but now I'm reminded that Teresa's response to me was public, so here's my response to her.
Teresa,
I was not only replying to you. I was replying to the entire thread. And I do understand that part of the risk in stating the obvious is that ones readers will feel preached to. That's why I started with a personal anecdote.
Your point, to stop all burning, I find to be simplistic. I react to smoke and don't like breathing it. But I recognize that within limits burning serves a purpose, it rapidly decomposes organic matter so that the remaining ashes can serve as soil nutrients, and it eliminates bulk organic waste. Would you oppose accidental and/or controlled burns of forests and grasslands that ecologists have proven to be part of the natural cycle?
My point was to say that refuse burning is a very small part of what contributes to air pollution, no matter where you are, and that any effort to clean up the air must address those larger issues, primarily exhaust emissions.
Also, I did mention that damp fuel creates more smoke.
The places I mentioned had and have clean air, although as I said it varies according to population density, climatic and geographical conditions. But it rains pretty much everywhere and the air cleansing results are similar.
I apologize that in making my points you felt talked down to.
Part of the limit and inadequacy of email correspondence is that it does not allow for rapid reciprocity and the expression of nuanced emotional response. It is not the same as conversation where visual and aural cues allow a participant to adjust content and delivery style. This leads to emotional conflicts when people feel slighted.
But if one is to use this medium, one must recognize that this problem is an inherent part of the process and do ones best to avoid reacting, knowing that the other participants aren't in the same room with you, adjusting their behavior to accomodate yours. This goes both ways and from what I've seen over the last seventeen years it is an unavoidable part of this medium.
For easy breathing,
Miles
Dixon
01-31-2007, 05:48 PM
I'm no environmental scientist, but based on years of reading I'm willing to bet that the bulk of air pollution in Sonoma County (and pretty much everywhere else in post-industrial societies like ours) is from automobile and truck exhaust.
Hi, Miles!
While I agree with you that we need to address transportation related pollution such as vehicle exhaust, I have recently learned that it's not the biggest source of air pollution. I don't know about Sonoma County in particular, but worldwide, livestock is a bigger source of air pollution! That's probably not enough to make me kick my meat addiction entirely, but hopefully keeping such facts in mind will encourage all of us meat junkies to eat less of it. The relevant article is copy-and-pasted below:
Published on Saturday, January 20, 2007 by the Huffington Post
Vegetarian is the New Prius
by Kathy Freston
*
President Herbert Hoover promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." With warnings about global warming reaching feverish levels, many are having second thoughts about all those cars. It seems they should instead be worrying about the chickens.
Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.
That's right, global warming. You've probably heard the story: emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are changing our climate, and scientists warn of more extreme weather, coastal flooding, spreading disease, and mass extinctions. It seems that when you step outside and wonder what happened to winter, you might want to think about what you had for dinner last night. The U.N. report says almost a fifth of global warming emissions come from livestock (i.e., those chickens Hoover was talking about, plus pigs, cattle, and others)--that's more emissions than from all of the world's transportation combined.
For a decade now, the image of Leonardo DiCaprio cruising in his hybrid Toyota Prius has defined the gold standard for environmentalism. These gas-sipping vehicles became a veritable symbol of the consumers' power to strike a blow against global warming. Just think: a car that could cut your vehicle emissions in half - in a country responsible for 25% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. Federal fuel economy standards languished in Congress, and average vehicle mileage dropped to its lowest level in decades, but the Prius showed people that another way is possible. Toyota could not import the cars fast enough to meet demand.
Last year researchers at the University of Chicago took the Prius down a peg when they turned their attention to another gas guzzling consumer purchase. They noted that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some ten times as much crops as we'd need if we just ate pasta primavera, faux chicken nuggets, and other plant foods. On top of that, we have to transport the animals to slaughterhouses, slaughter them, refrigerate their carcasses, and distribute their flesh all across the country. Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels--and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide--as does a calorie of plant protein. The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.
According to the UN report, it gets even worse when we include the vast quantities of land needed to give us our steak and pork chops. Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of the total land surface of the planet. As a result, farmed animals are probably the biggest cause of slashing and burning the world's forests. Today, 70% of former Amazon rainforest is used for pastureland, and feed crops cover much of the remainder. These forests serve as "sinks," absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, and burning these forests releases all the stored carbon dioxide, quantities that exceed by far the fossil fuel emission of animal agriculture.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the real kicker comes when looking at gases besides carbon dioxide--gases like methane and nitrous oxide, enormously effective greenhouse gases with 23 and 296 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, respectively. If carbon dioxide is responsible for about one-half of human-related greenhouse gas warming since the industrial revolution, methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for another one-third. These super-strong gases come primarily from farmed animals' digestive processes, and from their manure. In fact, while animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide.
It's a little hard to take in when thinking of a small chick hatching from her fragile egg. How can an animal, so seemingly insignificant against the vastness of the earth, give off so much greenhouse gas as to change the global climate? The answer is in their sheer numbers. The United States alone slaughters more than 10 billion land animals every year, all to sustain a meat-ravenous culture that can barely conceive of a time not long ago when "a chicken in every pot" was considered a luxury. Land animals raised for food make up a staggering 20% of the entire land animal biomass of the earth. We are eating our planet to death.
What we're seeing is just the beginning, too. Meat consumption has increased five-fold in the past fifty years, and is expected to double again in the next fifty.
It sounds like a lot of bad news, but in fact it's quite the opposite. It means we have a powerful new weapon to use in addressing the most serious environmental crisis ever to face humanity. The Prius was an important step forward, but how often are people in the market for a new car? Now that we know a greener diet is even more effective than a greener car, we can make a difference at every single meal, simply by leaving the animals off of our plates. Who would have thought: what's good for our health is also good for the health of the planet!
Going veg provides more bang for your buck than driving a Prius. Plus, that bang comes a lot faster. The Prius cuts emissions of carbon dioxide, which spreads its warming effect slowly over a century. A big chunk of the problem with farmed animals, on the other hand, is methane, a gas which cycles out of the atmosphere in just a decade. That means less meat consumption quickly translates into a cooler planet.
Not just a cooler planet, also a cleaner one. Animal agriculture accounts for most of the water consumed in this country, emits two-thirds of the world's acid-rain-causing ammonia, and it the world's largest source of water pollution--killing entire river and marine ecosystems, destroying coral reefs, and of course, making people sick. Try to imagine the prodigious volumes of manure churned out by modern American farms: 5 million tons a day, more than a hundred times that of the human population, and far more than our land can possibly absorb. The acres and acres of cesspools stretching over much of our countryside, polluting the air and contaminating our water, make the Exxon Valdez oil spill look minor in comparison. All of which we can fix surprisingly easily, just by putting down our chicken wings and reaching for a veggie burger.
Doing so has never been easier. Recent years have seen an explosion of environmentally-friendly vegetarian foods. Even chains like Ruby Tuesday, Johnny Rockets, and Burger King offer delicious veggie burgers and supermarket refrigerators are lined with heart-healthy creamy soymilk and tasty veggie deli slices. Vegetarian foods have become staples at environmental gatherings, and garnered celebrity advocates like Bill Maher, Alec Baldwin, Paul McCartney, and of course Leonardo DiCaprio. Just as the Prius showed us that we each have in our hands the power to make a difference against a problem that endangers the future of humanity, going vegetarian gives us a new way to dramatically reduce our dangerous emissions that is even more effective, easier to do, more accessible to everyone and certainly goes better with french fries.
Ever-rising temperatures, melting ice caps, spreading tropical diseases, stronger hurricanes... So, what are you do doing for dinner tonight? Check out www.VegCooking.com (https://www.VegCooking.com) for great ideas, free recipes, meal plans, and more! Check out the environmental section of www.GoVeg.com (https://www.GoVeg.com) for a lot more information about the harmful effect of meat-eating on the environment.*
Ever since the recent debate about Air Quality and burning refuse, I've wondered what the exact sources and amounts of local air pollution were. So I did a search of the EPA website, couldn't find what I was looking for, emailed them and some kind bureaucrat (probably a low paid clerk, they do all the office work anyway) got back to me and provided this website:
https://www.epa.gov/air/data/geosel.html
The county search option wasn't readily apparent to me but it's the last little circle on the right in the field at the top of the map of the continental U.S.
Here's their email to me, followed by mine to them:
R. Miles Mendenhall,
Thank you for your response to the Envirofacts Warehouse Website. Envirofacts is an EPA program undergoing continual research and enhancement, so your feedback is greatly appreciated. Envirofacts is designed to provide direct, public access to several EPAdata systems via an online query format. Users specify the criteria bywhich up to nine EPA databases are searched for environmentalinformation. The information that is retrieved using these online query forms is both facility and chemical related.You may find the information on air quality at the web site AirData https://www.epa.gov/air/data/geosel.html (https://javascript%3cb%3e%3c/b%3E:ol%28%27https://www.epa.gov/air/data/geosel.html%27%29;) by selecting name of county,state as "Sonoma Co, California". You may also contact the local AirData program for your specific questions. You may find the contact information at the web site https://www.epa.gov/air/data/contsl.html (https://javascript%3cb%3e%3c/b%3E:ol%28%27https://www.epa.gov/air/data/contsl.html%27%29;) )
Recently on a community online bulletin board called waccobb.net the issue of burning refuse as a cause of air pollution came up.
I would like to know what the percentage breakdown of different air pollution emission sources is, on a monthly or yearly average of your most recent data.
The sources of emissions that I am particularly interested in are:
refuse burning, mobile - cars, trucks both gasoline and diesel (if an indication of the difference between fuels is possible that would be optimal) and any other significant sources.
If it is not possible to get this data for my county, Sonoma, then the region or the state would be acceptable. But preferably the source of emissions information would be specific to either the county or at the largest range, the Bay Area.
If there is another agency that would have an easier time providing this data simply refer me to them and I will ask them.
Thank you very much for your work and attention in this matter,
R. Miles Mendenhall
Forestville, Sonoma County, CA
org Private Citizen
----------------------------------------------
Sure hope I haven't sprung some data mining trap that Homeland Security and the NSA have trolling on the web.
Hey guys! I'm a friendly, Don't shoot, I'm unarmed!!!</idaemon@unixpub>
nicofrog
02-14-2007, 11:24 AM
Teresa,and all; I am a great admirer of air quality as well. and for your temperance I would like to offer you some perspective. First of all You were driving your CAR the invisible smoke from car exhaust is 100 times as toxic as smoke from leaves or apple tree prunings. I AGREE and DELIGHT in chippers and I am a professional composter. the worst scourge in sonoma county is GRASS weed whackers are gross polluters ,noisy and dangerous, woodchip mulching is a good alternative to that!
HOWEVER it is important to keep in mind that FOREST FIRES are a NATURAL PART of our California ecology, there are even certain plants and trees that cannot propagate until a fire has swept through the terrain. highly inconvenient for humans due to lost homes and air quality issues none the less, Giant fir trees die with hundreds of pounds of fir pitch crystallized right below the bark so that summer storms Lightening will strike them whereupon they burst into 100 ft high huge flaming torches, if enough rain does not fall immediately this causes multiple forest fires. Many species die so that more can live later.
I do Burn piles on the coast in the winter mostly bull pine(Monterey pine) a non native species that is extremely prolific, a huge fire hazard and almost useless for firewood. it would be nice if everyone could afford to chip it all but unfortunately that just won't happen it's extremely expensive and the chippers are gross polluters.
Now look at this. do you know people who put food in their trash? 3/4 of the weight of our garbage is water laden food. ever listen to a garbage truck picking up the cans? 8 to 12 "grunts" of their huge diesel engine are required for each can,then there is all the TONS of smelly crap they haul daily at HUGE
cost to air quality and fuel reserves. THEN the food goes in LANDFILL where it gets buried up to 30 ft below the surface,where it decomposes aerobically producing dangerous and extremely harmful to the air quality Methane gas.
So if you really want to be an environmentalist with an eye to air quality, you may want to become a COMPOST activist like I am ,convince all your friends to get worm bins or hot composters for their back yards. take home all the foodwaste from every large party you go to. Tell people what you are doing and why. forget your neighbor burning a few leaves, he will die of old age and his kids will compost on site IF YOU DO . So, DO the worms,ask yourself is this trip or weedwhacker necessary, and take a deep breath of that wonderful,slightly smokey springtime air! and say to yourself WOW am I lucky to be alive! Nicolas Mawrhys Composting Consultant 707 684 0341.
I am talking about that wonderful air quality that is here after the winter rain washes the smog away. The air is fresh and those eastern hills are right THERE. This morning on my commute from Occ to Petaluma I saw once again smoke from people burning. As I drew closer, the eastern hills disappeared and my throat and lungs started to tighten and hurt. I cannot understand why anyone including the farmers ( Yes I do know about the right to farm) need to destroy the air quality in Sonoma County. I am DARN sick and tired of it. I know that in Santa Cruz county the county offers industrial size chippers for people to use , rather than burn. Clear days are getting far and few between except for those of us who live right on the coast. It seems a shame when cigarette smokers are on the outs but this can still happen! (don't tell it isn't the same,I would disagree with you). Lets stop burning!!
Teresa:pullshair: