As California Is Limiting the Barbecue, so Colorado Changes the Fireplace : Pollution: Denver and once-pristine ski areas match Los Angeles for foul air any day. They are altering hearth and home to clean the skies.

What the backyard barbecue is to Southern Californians in summer, a cozy fireplace is to Coloradans fresh off the ski slopes in winter. But both traditional barbecues and fireplaces--and all the warm associations that accompany them--face major alterations because of air pollution, much of which is caused in Colorado by smoke from burning wood.

As Californians well know, environmental officials have ruled that, starting in 1992, backyard barbecuers may not soak charcoal bricks with lighter fluid or use instant-light briquettes to start fires quickly. That’s just one of many moves in a major Southern California Air Quality Management District attempt to curb what is still the nation’s dirtiest air--a little step, but one coupled with others that the agency hopes will help.

But California is not alone in the West in facing an air-pollution crisis. Denver and its nearby mountain resorts are confronted by unique geographical and ecological problems. Colorado’s valleys and the surrounding picturesque peaks produce world-class skiing, but they also invite frequent “thermal inversions” when heavy cold air moves down from the mountains into the valleys. The warm air above acts like a lid, keeping cold air and pollution directly over these cities and resorts.

The city of Denver and ski areas like Aspen, Vail and Telluride are taking separate, often controversial, measures to diminish Colorado’s brown cloud. One county adjacent to Denver has amended its building code to ban installation of traditional wood-burning fireplaces and stoves in new construction starting this year. Only natural-gas logs or stove inserts meeting state pollution standards can be built.

Colorado State Sen. Pat Pascoe is drafting a bill to make similar measures applicable in metropolitan Denver. Denver alone counts 250,000 standard fireplaces. Pascoe’s proposed legislation aims at reducing wood-burning emissions 50% by 1995. About 25% of Denver’s particulates comes from wood burning. Already the city has declared wood-burning bans on days when pollution soars.

Ski areas have devised regulations as complicated as airline flight restrictions to drive away embarrassingly ugly air. Aspen, the resort frequented by many Californians, tried “to deal with a potential problem before it became a problem,” says Tom Dunlop, director of that area’s environmental health department.

Research conducted with the Colorado Health Department shows that wood burning is a major culprit. “Efforts to reduce it have attracted many volunteers,” Dunlop notes. “We put brochures in hotel rooms and run newspaper information ads to explain the need for wood-burn bans and request people to switch to certified stoves. We’ve had tremendous battles, though. There’ve been many public meetings with a whole audience against the environmental approach.”

Aspen does not legally bar the use of existing traditional fireplaces, but no more can be included in new buildings. They must be replaced by “gas logs,” which are made of ceramic material and use a natural-gas flame, or wood stoves that meet certification rules. Mary Hayes, associate editor of the Aspen Times, remembers when “lodges had fireplaces in every room. You saw a huge cloud of smoke on the side of town where condos had been built.” Residents like Hayes and her husband, Jim, who gather their own wood and rely primarily on it for heat, are exempt from wood-burning bans.

“Aspen was the first city in the country to outlaw smoking in public places,” she adds, “and in the ‘60s we had odd-even watering days (to conserve water). Not burning wood is like these things. It may take a while, but it’s picking up speed.”

So health conscious were the renovators of the historic and now ritzy Hotel Jerome that the building has only one working fireplace. And it uses gas logs. The kickoff for Aspen’s official air-pollution program, in 1988, took place right in front of that fireplace, and Dunlop says no one could tell the difference.

Vail, the continent’s largest ski resort, about 100 miles down the valley, has several fireplace restrictions. Susan Scanlon, environmental health officer for the town, says the City Council will take the final vote soon on a new ordinance to close loopholes in fireplace regulation. People building new homes, hotels and condominiums must either use gas logs or nothing. Under this proposal, wood-burning fireplaces and stoves would be banned in all new construction. Scanlon notes that gas logs are 95% less polluting than regular wood fires.

The town has no official wood-burning ban as such; instead, says Scanlon, there are voluntary no-burn holidays--like this month’s President’s Day Weekend--for locals. “Most abide by it. If someone comes here from out of town and pays $300 or $400 a night, they expect to be able to have a fire.”

Vail doyenne Cissy Dobson, whose late husband was mayor during the town’s formative years, has voluntarily brought the last of her four fireplaces up to the standards. “I put these great gas logs in my bedroom,” she says. “I don’t want to freeze when I’m reading or watching television, and I hate to add to pollution. I don’t know how warm the gas logs are, but they have everything I need except snap, crackle and pop.”

Telluride, near the southwest corner of the state, rammed through some of Colorado’s toughest wood-burning laws in 1985. Nicholas Kirsch of the Telluride Environmental Commission says, “Our legislation was created to regulate solid-fuel-burning devices. This means any kind of fireplace or wood-burning stove,” period. Every “device” must have a permit and be up to certain tight standards--or it cannot be used.

Under the town rules, any homeowner who wants to burn wood must find two people willing to sell their permits, thus reducing the total number of potential polluters allowed. The cost of single permits has soared to between $1,200 and $1,400, so just the privilege of fire can run up to $2,500. No building can have more than one such stove or fireplace, so the warm-fire apres-ski atmosphere takes some looking for here.

Do these hard-to-remember wood-burning regulations do any good? Will they help save Colorado’s once elixir-like air? “Definitely,” says Paul Christensen, a Telluride building official. “Several years ago riding into town, we saw thick haze. Now it’s really cleaned up.”

James King, an air-pollution specialist with the Colorado Department of Health, says that it’s much too early to tell about the effects of Denver’s wood-burn bans. All the experts agree that varying conditions make comparisons of strategies among areas impossible, and ultimate results difficult to predict.

One thing is clear: Fireplaces hold special meaning for people, both practically and aesthetically. “A fireplace is the focal point of a room. The messages go beyond the burning of wood,” says Denver architect Daniel Havekost, adding that he and his profession may have a hard time coming up with the means to make the new devices as cozy as the conventional fireplace.

“On the other hand, the younger generation might prefer an entertainment wall with television and electronics. I personally have strong feelings about fireplaces as an important part of residential design. But I and most people will be part of the solution to our brown cloud.”

“The act of being able to start a fire and control it gives people great comfort,” says J. Lawrence Wiberg, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. “A contained fire is very soothing to human beings. And an important point about fireplaces is they are the last hold to our primitive roots that we can bring into our own house.”

Is this primal need that drives people to curl up before a fire a part of people’s resistance to curbing fireplaces? Denver psychic consultant Bonnie Landt-Fegan observes that fireplaces “relate us back to our spirit. The first thing people look for in a house is the fireplace.” At least non-working or gas-log fireplaces “give people a sense of an opening,” she adds. “You’ll notice when people are by a fireplace, they talk more openly. They feel better with something natural near them. Fireplaces help the imagination.”

Deteriorating air in some of the country’s most beautiful settings requires us to use that collective imagination to balance our love of fire in the hearth with the preservation of the natural environment in which fire originated. The issue itself will not go up in smoke.