New EPA campaign old news for Linn County

CEDAR RAPIDS - The Environmental Protection Agency has launched a campaign to encourage the reduction of wood smoke pollution, which puts the federal agency a few months behind Linn County.

Linn, one of only two counties in Iowa with an air quality division, has made headlines all year by insisting that owners of wood-fired boilers abide by decades-old regulations on particulate pollution. That resulted in an ordinance that requires modifications to many existing wood-fired boilers, and imposes setback and smokestack height requirements for all new ones.

The county outlawed burning yard waste within a quarter-mile of city limits of Cedar Rapids, Hiawatha or Marion in 2008.

The EPA campaign, called “Burn Wise,” is mostly educational. The Web site suggests burning only dry wood and making sure wood-burning stoves and boilers work properly. It also encourages owners to upgrade to EPA-certified wood-burners.

“It just looks like it's a general, informational campaign,” said Jim Hodina, Linn County director of environmental services. “It could have been an intern's project. There's no program, there's no funding behind this.”

Some residents, particularly Kay Lammers, a council member from Marion, have pushed for recreational fires in backyards to be outlawed or regulated in Linn County as well, but Hodina said that's not on Public Health's radar.

“As long as it's a recreational fire, it's not more than three feet, it's perfectly legal,” he said. “That's really going to be more of a private nuisance issue than a public health issue.”