New woodstove regs will hurt homeowners

By Sen. Doug Thomas
(R-Ripley)
   

Burning wood is a necessary way of life for most Mainers. It is a cost-effective and environmentally sound method to heat our homes.

    New regulations proposed by the EPA will make it harder and more expensive for some of the poorest people in the United States to heat their homes. These rules threaten to eliminate hundreds of good jobs manufacturing and selling those stoves as well as supplying fuel to burn. And these rules may well make air quality worse.
    The regulations are designed to reduce pollution. Stoves currently being manufactured have eliminated most of the emissions that older stoves produce.
    They are required to emit no more than 15 micrograms of airborne particulate emissions per cubic meter of air. New rules being proposed reduce that threshold to 12 micrograms.
    To put this into context, Forbes Magazine noted that “secondhand tobacco smoke in a closed car can expose a person to 3,000-4,000 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter.” One wonders how such a miniscule reduction will have any meaningful impact and at what cost.
    In order to comply with the new mandates, woodstove manufacturers will be required to re-engineer their plants. The president of a woodstove company that has a business in Gorham, Maine estimates that it will cost $1 million to adapt their factory to allow them to build stoves meeting the emissions standards that will be in place by 2019.
    Those costs have to be added to the stoves they manufacture, adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of each new stove. Not to mention the added cost of maintaining these new stoves.
    The disincentive for consumers to invest in a new woodstove will be an unintended consequence of the new EPA regulations. Millions of old, inefficient woodstoves that emit far more pollution will not get replaced.
    We should be encouraging consumers to buy modern woodstoves that burn much more cleanly than older models. Instead, we will be discouraging them to invest in these newer stoves by moving the goal posts and putting the cost of buying one out of reach.
    Before any new regulations are allowed to become law there needs to be a study to determine if these rules will in fact harm air quality.
    We must also consider the safety of rural residents. We’ve seen winter storms that have left some homes without power for weeks. Had it not been for the wood stoves in those homes providing heat and making it possible to cook food, lives could have been in danger. That would have been in addition to the economic damage to those rural communities caused by the loss of heat in those homes for extended periods.
    During most winters we see the electricity out for at least a few days, and it’s not unheard of to see rural areas without power for weeks.
    Finally, I need to speak to the jobs these regulations jeopardize again. The jobs of 70 Maine people who build these new stoves in Gorham, the jobs in stove shops across Maine selling stoves, and the hundreds of good paying jobs of those who supply wood to burn in our poor state. When you add it all up that probably translates into well over 1,000 good-paying full time jobs in a state that has a poverty rate well above the national average.
    I strongly urge the reconsideration of this well-intended but ultimately counterproductive and job killing proposal.
    Sen. Thomas, a retail firewood dealer, sent these remarks with Maine Department of Environmental Commissioner Patricia Aho to deliver to the EPA in Boston on Feb. 26th.