The Lexington Village Planning Commission is proposing an ordinance which would outlaw the installation of outdoor wood-burning stoves within village limits. The ordinance is on the council agenda for Monday, March 3.
Councilman and planning commission member Kim Little said that the main issue with having wood burning-stoves within the village is the smoke. “Those burners are low to the ground, unlike a house chimney where the smoke is above the roof and dissipates more easily.”
Currently, there aren’t any outdoor stoves installed within the village, Little noted. Thus, the proposed ordinance would serve as a preventative measure towards maintaining the village.
“We don’t want the village to turn into an eye sore where people dump their wood in the front yard and attract rodents…With the wood burners, we just thought they would be more of a nuisance than would be helpful for the homeowner,” Little stated.
Talk of banning stoves within the village has been circulating for the past couple years, said Little. The proposal has been submitted to Law Director Harry Welsh, who will draft an ordinance for the village.
Bellville, a neighbor to the village of Lexington, already has an ordinance in place concerning the installation of wood-burning stoves. Mayor Darrell Banks said that the regulations are “pretty restrictive.”
“We did quite a bit of research when considering the regulations,” he said.
To his knowledge, there is only one stove within the village; however, there are several along the outskirts, “But there you have plenty of room. In suburban areas where a lot of houses are a short distance from one another is why we have restrictions. If everyone had [a wood-burning stove] it would be really smoky,” the mayor said.
“I agree with Lexington in that you wouldn’t want to have [the wood burners] in the village,” he added.
Nationwide, the subject of wood-burning stoves is a “hot” topic, given the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly proposed regulations.
According to the EPA “Burn Wise” website, “Approximately 10 million wood stoves are currently in use in the United States, and 70 to 80 percent of them are older, inefficient, conventional stoves that pollute.” Thus, the EPA has drafted rules that would strengthen the emissions standards for new wood stoves, deeming the majority of current wood-burning stoves unacceptable.
“The proposed standards also would set particulate matter (PM) emission limits for newly manufactured adjustable-rate woodstoves, pellet stoves, wood-fired hydronic heaters, forced-air furnaces, masonry wood heaters, and a type of previously unregulated woodstove known as a ‘single burn rate’ stove,” stated the EPA standard.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “The use of cord wood and wood pellets as the primary residential space heating fuel has increased by 39 percent since 2004, to about 2.5 million households in 2012. About eight percent of households use wood as a secondary source of heat, making wood second only to electricity as a supplemental heating fuel.”
The EPA further notes, “The proposed rules would not affect existing woodstoves and other wood-burning heaters currently in use in people’s homes…The proposal also would not apply to new or existing heaters that are fueled solely by oil, gas or coal, and it would not apply to outdoor fireplaces, fire pits, pizza ovens or chimineas.”
The regulations are undergoing a comment period, in which concerned citizens may choose to submit their comments regarding the new rules by May 5 of this year.
“Those burners are low to the ground, unlike a house chimney where the smoke is above the roof and dissipates more easily,” said Kim Little.
