{"id":143962,"date":"2018-01-05T02:16:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T07:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=143962"},"modified":"2018-01-05T02:16:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T07:16:06","slug":"new-rules-for-wood-burning-appliances-in-montreal-two-decades-after-ice-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/05\/new-rules-for-wood-burning-appliances-in-montreal-two-decades-after-ice-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"New rules for wood burning appliances in Montreal, two decades after ice storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: Flag of the City of Montreal, Canada (Photo by Own work. – Based on [1], Public Domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>Montreal’s strict, new rules regarding wood-burning appliances are set to kick in this year, two decades after the heating systems regained popularity in the aftermath of the crippling 1998 ice storm.<\/p>\n

By October, it will be illegal for Montrealers to use what’s considered a solid-fuel-burning heating system unless the appliance has been certified as emitting no more than 2.5 grams per hour of fine particles into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The slow crackdown on these appliances, such as wood-burning stoves and fireplaces, began roughly a decade ago after health authorities started warning about the growing number of wintertime smog days in Montreal.<\/p>\n

Health Canada says smog, particularly fine particulate matter, affects breathing, heart and blood functions.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Environment Canada issued a smog warning for Montreal and surrounding areas. The agency said \u201chigh concentrations of fine particulates\u201d were expected to persist through the morning and result in poor air quality.<\/p>\n

Montreal residents in particular were advised to stop using wood-burning stoves or fireplaces until the warning is lifted.<\/p>\n

Anti-pollution activist Andre Belisle says Montreal’s frequent poor wintertime air quality is partly due to the legacy of the ice storm when, over a several-day period in January 1998, cities along the St. Lawrence Valley received more than double the normal amount of freezing rain for the year.<\/p>\n

Electricity blackouts lasted weeks in certain areas and people rushed to buy wood-burning stoves and other similar heating systems to survive the cold and to be prepared for a similar weather crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was literally an explosion of people going back to wood-burning heating systems (in 1998),\u201d said Belisle, president of a Quebec association that fights atmospheric pollution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ran a recycling program to try and eliminate slow-burning stoves and we did an analysis and learned that following the ice storm, stores all over the city went out of stock, and people from Montreal started buying wood-burning appliances from all other regions of the province.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montreal’s new emission standards are the most strict in the province, according to Chantal Demers, head of a Quebec association representing companies in the heating industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would have preferred for the rules to be less severe,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cThey go above and beyond what is required provincially.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2009, Quebec passed provincewide legislation banning the fabrication, selling and distribution of wood-burning appliances that weren’t certified by the Canadian Standards Association or the American Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n

Montreal started taking action against the roughly 50,000 wood-burning appliances on its territory, also in 2009, when it banned the installation of any new, non-EPA-certified wood-burning heating system.<\/p>\n

The latest bylaw was passed by Montreal city council in 2015, but the appliance ban takes effect this year.<\/p>\n

Under the rules, Montrealers can’t use any wood-burning appliance, regardless of certification, during smog alert days.<\/p>\n

Citizens won’t be forced to get rid of their less-performing, wood-burning appliances such as fireplaces but they won’t be able to use them after October.<\/p>\n

The law, however, includes one exception: if a power outage lasts longer than three hours, citizens can use any wood-burning appliance they own.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the new rules don’t apply to wood-burning appliances that cook food for commercial purposes, such as the city’s famed bagel shops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montreal’s strict, new rules regarding wood-burning appliances are set to kick in this year, two decades after the heating systems …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":135897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[14668,1485,41836],"class_list":["post-143962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-ice-storm","tag-montreal","tag-wood-burning-appliances","mauthors-giuseppe-valiante","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}