Off Grid Attack: EPA To Outlaw Many Wood Burning Stoves

Our ever so helpful government has decided that your wood burning stove is now a danger to the world. In another attempt to outlaw the off grid lifestyle, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the same agency that was recently caught using drones to spy on Americans, is now going after home owners who use Wood Burning Stoves to heat their homes.

Lady cooking with a Wood Burning Stove

Shortly after the re-election of President Obama, the agency announced new radical environmental regulations that threaten to effect people who live off the grid. The EPA’s new environmental regulations reduce the amount of airborne fine-particle matter from 15 micrograms to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

This means that most wood burning stoves would now fall into a class deemed unacceptable under these new draconian measures. The EPA has even launched a nifty new website called burn wise to try to sway public opinion.

On their site, while trying to convince people to get rid of their old stoves and buy the new EPA-certified stoves, they state that these older stove must be scraped, and cannot be resold.

From the EPA Site:

The local air pollution agency says I can’t sell my old wood stove to help pay for an EPA-certified wood stove.  Why is that?
Replacing an older stove with a cleaner-burning stove will not improve air quality if the older stove is reused somewhere else.  For this reason, wood stove change out programs usually require older stoves to be destroyed and recycled as scrap metal, or rendered inoperable.

Let’s hope this doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the newly created Department of Homeland Security Environmental Justice Units. The next thing you know we might all be getting a knock at the door….. Your Neighbor reported that you might be burning some wood, do you mind if we take a look around?

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23 Comments

  1. I just bought a new woodstove and it probably meets all EPA rules but this is all TOTALLY CRAZY and BS!! The problem they have is they can’t TAX us for using our own wood. F*** em and feed em beans. I will do everything I can to eliminate the government from my life. They will burn for their selfish ways.

  2. Well I have been burning wood over 40 years And I am not going to stop burning wood. This stuff all started when Obama wanted to go green. And he appointed one of his Muslim friends to run the EPA. For the last 5 years I have been on disability. And I haven’t seen obama or nobody give me anything for free. This stuff about helping the poor people in America is a bunch of lies. And burning wood really helps me on my power bill. They need to go after these people who burn their garbage in their back yard before they start on wood stoves. Everytime there is a storm or tornado, I get a lot of free wood out of people’s yards. I feel like I am helping clean America up. So you EPA bunch can go to hell and you tell your big leader that I said he can go also.

    • In the very off chance that you care about honesty and truth (hard to imagine, really), let me mention that the EPA standards on woodstoves were proposed in 1985 and became part of the Federal Code in 1989 – all under Ronnie Reagan.

      ALL of the Presidents as well as the EPA heads (including Republican Christie Whitman, etc. etc.) have been “for” the cleaner air standards, AND it has made a big difference in the quality of life for millions of Americans.

      But, yeah, I know. Obama must have time traveled back to the mid-80’s and whispered in Nancy Reagans ear, right?

  3. What about all the people, including the Amish that burn their trash, plastics and tires? are they exempt because they are a religion? WTF is this country coming too?

  4. If this article is correct, what about the Chem Trials that are polluting our skies and us at the same time, something to do with controlling weather possibly, do you have these in the USA? we seem to have them here in the UK. No body asked us if they could pollute us and do this to our weather and skies, I assume it it is government approved. And you are supposed to stop burning wood because of pollution?

  5. It is getting really depressing. I am almost 61 now. If you had told me when I was a kid or a teenager that even the most basic things such as a fire, would become criminal acts, I would have laughed in your face. Hell, even 20 or 30 years ago, I would have been optimistic and said “Nah, that’ll never happen.” Wow, just wow… I wonder if we even have a change of President and Congress, what they odds are they can or will undo this nightmare tangle of regulations that have been put in place and are expanding daily?

    It is getting harder and harder to look on the bright side. I would be happy just to see the “not the greatest side” at this point. It amazes me to see so many young people slathering over the prospect of bigger and bigger government. The young people were always the ones to defy and distrust authority. Toto, I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore.

    • Criminal acts? Well, I guess when you start out wrong, you end up wrong!

      It has nothing to do with criminal law.

      If you want to see the result of “freedom” in regulations, look at the plant explosion in TX a couple weeks ago. Now we find out they had almost no insurance. Lots of dead and injuries and 100’s of millions in damage. Who is gonna pay? Rick Perry?

      C’mon. Have sense.

  6. has anyone thought about grouping up, choosing a state and moving there? that being of the same mind and not agreeing with local law in your area it might be expedient to move to said state and slowly taking over the state government. by doing so you all would be farther ahead then simply being isolated outposts of resisters??? i’m not advocating a militia type of lifestyle but maybe close to it without being wing nuts and radicals. sounds like it might be a good place to live. maybe take over the country one state at a time and get back to the way america use to be…
    oh and excuse me for any grammatical errors, lack of capitalization and possible missing or lack of punctuation. i’d really hate to insult the grammar nazis..

  7. Absolute horse feathers the whole debate revolves around the difference between 12 and 15 mcg/airborne dust. REALLY the govt should actually participate fully in the Kyoto accord and tackle real polluters like power plants etc how about the forest industry that burns usable wood in the slash piles instead of using it.

  8. I’m glad the EPA is doing this. I live next to an ass who pumps woodsmoke into my bedroom all winter. It makes me gag. I did nothing to him and the city will buy him a new stove that meets the EPA certification but he won’t get one.

  9. Oh but it is okay for some &^%ing company or is it the government to spray the sky’s with some shit chemicals that we all breath in, eat and drink in the water!

  10. I love how the EPA delights in targeting private citizens when the ADM plant in my town spews poisons into the air with the stench and the haze making it difficult to take in a decent breath some days. Where is the EPA with that??

  11. Good luck with that… when they get a handle on diesel and can stop factories and car emissions… then you talk to me about my woodstove….our local hospital has been spearheading the woodstove project for a couple of years now. Trying to push legislation to ban them here in New Hampshire citing asthmatics. So its places like Cheshire Medical and no doubt other medical institutions that are backing this. Its ok to work in a place with poor air quality… since they fear retribution of the companies… but targeting individuals is an easy approach for them.

  12. Glad to see y’all are catching up to about 25 years ago, when woodstoves began being regulated by the individual STATES. The EPA and Feds were sued by the states for allowing dirty burning stoves…..and therefore had to mandate cleaning burning.

    Before you consider it a plot, this was all under Ronnie Reagan and G. Bush the first. But it’s not their “fault”. Every single emitter of pollution is and has been regulated, from your car to your furnace, so this is nothing special or nothing new.

    Fact is, if they didn’t regulate cars and other such things (and woodstoves), we’d see literally MILLIONS of additional deaths and diseases each year.

    I guess if you think the world is ending, you may not care. But most sane Americans are proud of the way we’ve cleaned up SOME of our air, water and land. “Freedom” is NOT the freedom to cause cancer and other diseases to your fellow 310+ million compatriots.

  13. the area that I live in includes people that for centuries have lived w/o electric, automobiles, and other ‘modern’ conveniences…they are Amish…they are not ‘off-the-grid’, they burn wood…there is no way the ‘gov’t’ will make them give up their way of life!!! This is ridiculous! And I’d also like to know if the EPA will regulate ALL factories, Mills, and other places that put ‘micro’ bits into the air…

    • Short answer – YES – the EPA has and does regulate every point of “source” pollution.

      Hope that helps.

  14. Hmm, look at the original post by a dude trying to stir up a conspiracy or hornets nest. He quotes:
    “For this reason, wood stove changeout programs usually require older stoves to be destroyed and recycled as scrap metal, or rendered inoperable”

    Do y’all KNOW what a woodstove changeout program is? Well, it’s when they give you a NEW and very efficient woodstove which gives you more heat from less wood and smokes less….often for FREE or very CHEAPLY.

    So, yeah, if they pay for it you are required to scrap the old one – that’s the whole idea.

    BUT, in 98% plus of the US (and this has NOTHING to do with Federal law, so complain to your county or air shed) it is 100% fine to sell your older stove.

    There you so. A simple subject really. That is, unless you think the world is ending next week, in which case it’s all Obamas and the Muslims fault.

  15. Woodstoves are highly inefficient anyway. Even the newer models that claim 75% efficiency is a lie. That only happens in perfect conditions such as in a controlled environment. Instead, build a cob and brick rocket stove mass heater. You use 25% of the wood you were using in a woodstove and it reburns the smoke to create even more heat so that by the time it is released out of your vent, then is barely anything more than steam. CO2 is burned away as well as 99% of the smoke. Do your own research on the subject and I promise you will be a believer.

  16. This is just as stupid as outlawing rainwater collection on your own property! When the governtment actually starts doing their job to protect the people, their food, the environment we depend on, and so much more…holding corporations responsible for pollution, paying taxes, poisoning foods, then I might actually hear what they have to say. This makes no sense what-so-ever, unless they stop factory farming and GMO foods right now!!!!

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