A new environmental battle is brewing

A new environmental battle is brewing

A new environmental battle is brewing, as many homeowners have been buying wood burning stoves and similar devices to brace themselves against the onset of winter and the expected steep increases in home heating costs.

The crux of the problem is that wood smoke contains particles of soot that exacerbate heart disease and trigger asthma attacks. Consequently, USA Today reports, officials in several parts of the country are looking for ways to reduce the amount of smoke that will be emitted by the nation´s estimated 37 million home chimneys and 10 million wood stoves this winter.

Some locales are offering monetary incentives to anyone who gets rid of a wood stove that is more than 13 years old. Others are asking residents not to burn wood on highly polluted days. And seven Northeastern states have petitioned the federal government to crack down on a new innovation in wood-powered heating: outdoor wood boilers that use water warmed by burning wood.

The EPA´s mercury reduction rule for power plants is likely to go under the microscope again this week. The New York Times reports that two national groups of state and local air quality regulators are about to unveil a proposal that they say would yield fewer mercury emissions in less time than the EPA´s rule.

Industry groups contend that the plan would drive up energy costs, which would then be passed on to consumers -- an argument that is likely to get a lot of traction right now (the immediately preceding item provides one example of why). But the regulatory groups counter that the industry groups´ cost argument is a scare tactic.

Is it me, or is this old back-and-forth starting to grate like a phonograph playing a scratchy record with the needle stuck in a circular groove [scritch!] stuck in a circular groove [scritch!] stuck in a circular groove ...

Speaking of broken records, it´s hard not to feel at least a little numb from the never-ending coverage of the aftereffects of the hurricanes that devastated the Gulf Coast a couple months ago. I keep seeing reports, many of which seem to contradict one another, about how destructive the storms were, environmentally speaking.

The Houston Chronicle, after a lengthy, meticulous slog through the National Response Center´s online database, published this exhaustive account Sunday of how serious and widespread the environmental damage was, and is. The short of it is that the harm is extremely serious, and very widespread. This is a must read for everyone in our line of work. There´s a lot of work to be done down there, people.

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.