Cozy Domestic Symbol Takes Heat in Berkeley
Berkeley politicians, known for assailing such acts as government bombing campaigns and capital punishment, now are taking on an emblem of domestic coziness: the fireplace.
The City Council has banned log-burning fireplaces in new homes and other buildings, believing the warmth of wood fires comes at the cost of clean air. It also adopted tough restrictions for new wood-fired pizza ovens and restaurant grills, which are as much a Berkeley fixture--and some say as big a polluter--as aged VW buses.
Like other stands taken by this little city on big issues, no one expects the fireplace ban to yield tangible results any time soon. For one thing, housing construction in built-up Berkeley is rare, officials acknowledge.
Fireplace makers say the city should have required the thousands of fireplaces already smoking up the air to burn cleaner. They would have been happy to sell homeowners the necessary equipment to comply, they say.
Jami Caseber, the Berkeley environmental activist who led the drive for the ordinance, calls it “the first step to controlling or curtailing residential wood burning.”
Caseber said he would have preferred restricting existing fireplaces, but the new law “was the best I could do” as a compromise with “conservatives.”
Berkeley’s measure follows fireplace bans in at least seven Bay Area places, including San Jose and Palo Alto, as well as Contra Costa and San Mateo counties.
In winter months, wood smoke ties with car and truck exhaust as the Bay Area’s leading source of particulate air pollution. Wood smoke on average produces 30% of the region’s winter particle pollution, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. In some areas on some days, it can produce as much as 80% of harmful air particles.
Tommie Mayfield, principal air quality specialist for the Bay Area AQMD, said oil refineries, commercial dumps and power plants were once the area’s largest generators of particle pollutants. Decades of environmental restrictions have curbed those industrial emissions, Mayfield said.
During cold and calm Bay Area winters, smoke from wood fires is trapped by warm air hovering above cold air, and hangs on in the absence of wind and rain. Tiny particulates from the smoke can become lodged deep in the lungs. The most dangerous particles are less than 2.5 micrograms in diameter. (A human hair is about 75 micrograms in diameter.) Some scientists say the health threat can be as dangerous as secondhand tobacco smoke.
Particulate air pollution is especially harmful to people with diseases such as asthma, chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and to those with heart disease. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable.
Regulators say the danger has yet to register with the public, and that is one reason why Bay Area officials have not proposed tougher policies.
“It’s more difficult to get people to change patterns of behavior if they do not know why [they should],” said Mayfield. Ordinances like Berkeley’s are meant “to make the public more aware that particulates are a problem.”
Michael Gersick, a lobbyist for fireplace makers and masons who lives in the Berkeley area, says the fireplace ban, rather than raising awareness, is more a lesson in foolish policy. “I love the tempest and tumult of Berkeley. But God help you if you want to act responsibly and expect Berkeley to confront a public policy issue using facts,” he said.
Gersick, of the California Hearths and Home Assn. trade group, said his industry clients would support emission limits for fireplaces. “All we really want is a standard to meet,” he said, citing a Washington state law as an example.
His group also supports controls on the use of fireplaces rather than their existence. Because wood smoke is most troublesome on winter days with little wind, Gersick said the industry favors a ban on wood burning on days when pollution is worst.
Gersick’s clients have sued Palo Alto and San Jose. Fireplace bans in those cities deny fireplace manufacturers the same chance to meet pollution standards available to others, the suits allege. Wood stoves certified by the Environmental Protection Agency, or heaters burning wood pellets rather than logs, for instance, are typically allowed by the Bay Area ordinances banning new fireplaces.
Gersick said those suits are being settled, and the manufacturers do not plan to sue Berkeley because the stakes there are too low. “The fight would be about, maybe, a half-dozen fireplaces,” he said.
Though other Bay Area cities have banned new fireplaces, Berkeley is the first to restrict wood-fired restaurant ovens and grills. The ordinance requires pollution-control equipment on new ovens and grills, which will now also require a permit from the city and the Bay Area AQMD.
The rule exposes a potential conflict for the city’s many eco-conscious epicureans: The foraged-mesquite fires cooking free-range chickens or vegan pizzas also may be fouling the air.
It also has incensed Alice Waters, owner of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse restaurant and a world-famous advocate for organic foods. Waters said she burns half a cord of oak and fig weekly in her grill and oven, which have no pollution-control equipment.
The Berkeley ordinance, which concerns only new ovens, will not affect Waters, who built hers 20 years ago. But Waters said her grill and oven did not work properly when she tried to filter the exhaust, and new restaurateurs shouldn’t be burdened with such a restriction.
“I am totally opposed” to the new law, she said. “We’ve had a fundamental connection between fire and food since the beginning of time. Until we stop driving cars, I’d rather live in a world with wood-burning ovens,” Waters said.
The battle over wood burning will probably escalate. Caseber and some other backers of the Berkeley fireplace law say they hope the public will embrace tougher restrictions and a total ban at some point. They liken the fight against fireplaces to past campaigns against tobacco smoke.
“When they started outlawing smoking in public places there was a huge outcry,” Caseber said. “Now nobody is tolerant of smokers, but we’re super-tolerant of wood smoke,” he said.
Others argue that there are few cases in which a ban is necessary: Fireplaces are not efficient heat sources and, like ovens and grills, they can be fueled by gas.
That’s where the environmental debate spirals into another Berkeley hallmark, the culture clash. Gersick says prohibiting wood burning would be like banning gardens to cut pollen: an attack on a way of life.
“Fireplaces have been a symbol of the family since we lived in caves,” he said. “I’m not ready to let somebody else decide which of my domestic pleasures can be taken away from me without proof of harm.”
