What's Wrong in Placer County

Buckley Rumford Fireplaces
What's Wrong in Placer County

This fireplace and four others in the showroom of one of our dealers.

We are being threatened with a fine up to $75,000 per day by the Placer County, CA Air District for selling a Certified Rumford fireplace to a customer who had a permit to build it.
The best summary of our defense is our responce to the second Notice of Violation (NOV) the Air Diistrict sent us in which we ask4ed them to withdraw the NOV. We are waiting for them to respond.
Our defense seems simple enough ....
A Placer County homeowner customer notified us that she had a permit to build a 36" Certified Rumford Fireplace. Pressing for details we discovered she had submitted our Test Results with the Test Lab statement that the Certified Rumfords tested met the EPA stove emissions standard by an equivalent test method developed by the EPA and accepted by Washington. She sent us a copy of the plan and building permit. Sounded reasonable to us. We sold her the a masonry 36" Certified Rumford Fireplace.
We did not initiate the sale. We did not attempt to circumvent Air District rules. We did attempt to make sure our customer had a building permit and that the fireplace complied with Air District rules.
After the fireplace had been built the Air District got involved and said the fireplace did not meet Air District emission rules.

We think our Rumford does meet the Air District rules by the equivalency developed by the EPA for fireplaces. The Air District says, in a classic non sequitur, that it does't meet the stove standard. The building official, who has the authority to enforce the Air District rules, ruled that the Rumford did meet the emissions standard and issued a building permit to built it.

After one phone call that went nowhere, Placer County Air District went from accussation directly to penalty, sending us a Notification of Violation (NOV) threatening us with a fine up to $75,000 per day and offering to "settle" for $7,125.
We could get into the differences between fireplaces and stoves, emissions testing methods and the EPA and California Air Districs regulations. But the imprtant thing is to defend ourselves by pleading not guilty.
This will be more interesting when you realise we are fighting for the industry. Masonry fireplace sales have declined 90% in the last twenty years when sales are pretty steady in the rest of the country. We think the decline in California is due to harrassment and intimidation by the zealots in the air districts who would ban all woodpbuning if they could and are trying to pick off the low hangung fruit - masonry firepaces - by agressive disingenuous regulation.
We are organizing and raisinfg funds for a countersuit or class actrion lawsuit

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