Sustainable North

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Tuesday, April 13, 2010: Borough Mayor Luke Hopkins revised his air pollution control plan, adding a provision prohibiting dense chimney smoke that creates a nuisance for neighbors. Hopkins said Monday that he plans to ask for assembly approval in June. The measure, Ordinance 2010-17, sets limits on chimney smoke opacity, [...]

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From The Associated Press, Saturday, February 20, 2010: A proposed new rule in Fairbanks would fine people at least $300 for using wood- and-coal-fired stoves that belch out dense smoke, part of an attempt to curb air pollution in the area. The Fairbanks News-Miner reports that Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Luke Hopkins is sponsoring [...]

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From The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Thursday, February 4, 2010: Check your chimney or have someone else do it. Charlie Whitaker, who has cleaned chimneys for 25 years, sent me three photos of chimneys he cleaned this week. During his career in Fairbanks, Whitaker has peered into 10,000 chimneys, but never has he seen a bigger [...]

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From The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Tuesday, January 26, 2010: A telephone survey aims to find out how residents of the Fairbanks North Star Borough go about heating their homes. Borough officials want to use the information to help develop a pollution control plan for PM 2.5, tiny particulates known to embed in the lungs and [...]

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From The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Tuesday, January 19, 2010: Increasing sunlight has helped improve particulate pollution in Fairbanks, according to borough air quality specialist Jim Conner. The average particulate pollution level in Fairbanks on Monday was 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air, making the air unhealthy for sensitive groups, Conner said. Earlier this month, [...]

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From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Sunday, January 17, 2010: The tiny town of Pinehurst, Idaho, sits in a valley and needed to do something about the pollution being caused by smoke from wood stoves. So the federal government helped Pinehurst residents buy cleaner-burning wood stoves. The state government asked people to hold back voluntarily on [...]

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From The Associated Press, Wednesday, January 13, 2010: On winter days when the air is still and Fairbanks area residents fire up their wood stoves and outdoor boilers, Alaska’s second largest city becomes entombed in a shroud of pollution. The problem is due in part to wood stoves and outdoor boilers that belch out small [...]

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From The Tundra Drums, Sunday, November 29, 2009: For the Bethel region of Alaska, the heating fuel of the future might be a throwback to the past. A business and organizations there, including Bethel’s city government, are increasingly turning to firewood in an effort to replace the costly heating fuel that often exceeds $6 a [...]

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ASK A BUILDER By CCHRC Staff The “Ask a Builder” series is dedicated to answering some of the many questions Fairbanks residents have about building, energy and the many other parts of home life. Q: Why is it beneficial to have south-facing windows on a home? Because of the orientation with the sun, south-facing windows [...]

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From The Associated Press, Thursday, October 28, 2009: The Coast Guard’s plan to move away from oil-fired burners and toward heating with biomass could provide a lift to the timber industry in Southeast Alaska. Projects are being considered in Ketchikan and Sitka that would convert building heating systems to biomass boilers that burn wood chips. [...]

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