Berkeley council bans new fireplaces, wood-burning pizza ovens
Law intended to control smoke pollutionCharles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, December 15, 2001------------------------------------------------------------------------
There'll be no chimney for Santa in homes of the future in Berkeley, thanks to a ban on new fireplaces that may impose the strictest wood-burning regulations in the Bay Area.
Likewise no more wood-fired pizza ovens or mesquite grills in restaurants in the city famous for its "gourmet ghetto."
Intended to reduce health risks from polluted air, the ban applies only to fireplaces and commercial open-fire appliances that are new, or to substantial remodels of existing ones. Otherwise, existing ones are exempt, as are new wood stoves and other appliances that meet strict U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.
The ordinance, a compromise that passed its first reading this week and is up for its second reading on Tuesday, left many on both sides of the debate unhappy.
"It's mostly a symbolic gesture," said Berkeley environmentalist Jamie Caseber, a member of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission, which debated the issue for nearly two years before recommending the ordinance adopted by the City Council. New houses in built-up Berkeley are rare, he said.
"It's just a first step in a hopefully organized strategy to control wood smoke," said Caseber, one of five Bay Area individuals named this year as Clean Air Champions, an award jointly sponsored by the EPA, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and other organizations. "Wood smoke is highly dangerous to people's health."
Michael Gersick of the California Hearths and Home Association, an industry group, also assailed the Berkeley move, for opposite reasons.
"In its typical rush to be at the forefront of social-improvement legislation, Berkeley has swallowed a deeply flawed series of assumptions and outrageous extrapolations," he said.
Gersick criticized studies that according to the air quality district show a correlation between wood smoke and disease, particularly emergency room visits for asthma sufferers and deaths from heart attack.
Berkeley's law may be the most stringent among the 16 other Bay Area cities and counties that have adopted some form of wood-smoke regulations, mostly in the past two years.
Berkeley's regulations have been inserted into the building code, providing an enforcement tool that other jurisdictions typically lack, said Nabil Al- Hadithy, manager of the city's Toxics Management Division.
Tommie Mayfield of the air quality district said Dublin is the only other city she knows of with restrictions in the building code. But Dublin's law, unlike Berkeley's, does not restrict commercial wood-burning.
Air district studies show wood-burning can contribute as much as 80 percent of winter pollution particles in some parts of the Bay Area. Mayfield urged those with existing fireplaces to minimize pollution by burning only dry hardwoods and following other tips from the district's guidelines, available at www.sparetheair.com.
Old News (this has been a long fight)
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