County battles air quality challenges
The Lincoln County Board of
Commissioners plans to pass an emergency declaration next Wednesday
that would exempt sole heat source users from a woodstove ban in
the case of a full air-quality alert in the Libby area.
“We don’t want to tell some little old
lady she can’t use her stove,” Commissioner Tony Berget said.
“We’re not interested in being smoke Nazis. We want everybody to be
able to breathe good, clean air, but we want to work together as a
team to accomplish that.”
If commissioners approve the measure,
the exemption would go into effect immediately and continue for 90
days through the rest of the winter, which tends to be the worst
months for air quality.
Residents rallied at the courthouse in
October 2008 after the county announced the only air-quality alert
to date that prohibited the use of wood-burning stoves. Temperature
inversions, stagnant weather conditions and woodstove emissions
every year over the winter months cause fine particulates, known as
PM2.5, to elevate to levels close to violating state and federal
standards.
Kathi Hooper, director of the county
department of environmental health, and her staff are hesitant to
call a full alert because they know that many woodstove users can’t
afford an alternative heat source.
“With the current economy we have
people who really aren’t able to buy electric heaters or even fill
their propane tank if they have one,” Hooper said. “I cannot in
good conscience tell them they cannot heat their home (with their
stove).”
High PM2.5 levels have caused the
county to call cautionary air quality alerts this week and past
weeks. Hooper spoke with commissioners this past Monday about
changing the county air pollution ordinance, which in a 2006
revision removed the sole source exemption.
The exemption cannot become a permanent
amendment to the ordinance, however, without permission from both
the state Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental
Protection Agency, Hooper said. Last year the DEQ denied Hooper’s
request to reinstate the exemption because with the area’s
air-quality challenges, the agency did not want the county to
create less stringent regulations. The DEQ this year has agreed to
work with the county to revise the ordinance in a way that would be
acceptable to the EPA, Hooper said.
Hooper hopes that if the county is able
to sign up all sole heat source users and she is able to prove it’s
a small number, the DEQ and EPA will more likely approve the
exemption.
“As we do the state process, being able
to tell them that, for example, it’s only 4 percent of homes, could
be helpful,” she said. “I do think it’s a very small number. We can
show that with this limited number of homes it will have little
impact.”
The state has also agreed to look into
helping fund different ways to notify the public about air-quality
alerts, such as a better telephone call-out system and an
electronic reader board, Hooper said. Currently the county has an
e-mail list, a hotline number and a dialer that can’t be easily
understood.
“That is one of our biggest challenges,
just letting people know when there is an advisory, an alert,”
Hooper said.
The county air-quality ordinance states
that if air alerts fail to keep emissions within government
standards, wood-burning stoves would be completely banned. Hooper
and Berget can’t foresee that happening, though the county could be
forced to enact more restrictions on woodstoves and outdoor
burning. In addition, federal funding could be taken away.
“If we don’t show that we are making
efforts to attain it could affect federal funding – that is a
common threat from the state,” Hooper said.
Libby is known nationally for the
success of its woodstove changeout program, conducted in 2005-07 in
which more than 1,000 woodstoves were replaced or repaired,
significantly reducing fine particulate emissions. The air quality
has improved over time in Libby, but the EPA continues to enact
stricter standards.
To reach the Air Quality Hotline, call
293-5644. To receive air quality alerts via e-mail, send a message
to eleigh@libby.org.