Truth eludes council ad

I can’t believe this council is moving to its next step in mediocrity with the proposed clean air bylaw.

It takes out a full page ad with an emotive caption and an article full of un-truths.

Dirty and smoky air is not caused by old fires, only by how we maintain them and by what we burn in them.

We (here in Putaruru) have an old Fisher fire, re-bricked about three years ago and fitted with a new 10mm thick baffle plate. I estimate the Fisher is about 40 years old and will last another 40.

Incidentally a friend of ours had a new ‘‘clean-burning’’ fireplace installed a few month ago and his baffle plate is already warped. So how clean burning is it now?

I challenge anybody from the council to take emission measurements for our fire and see how much difference it really makes.

If all the old fires were replaced at once with clean burning ones, there would still be pollution. It would only drop by a few percentage points.

Yes, they can be replaced by heat pumps but they run at a far higher cost than generally assumed. We heat our 115sqm house comfortably and also fire up a chip heater most mornings for a couple of hours. Our power bill is about $80 a month. Neighbours with a similar sized house of similar age have a heat pump only and a power bill of about $300 a month. I have heard of far higher ones.

Isn’t it far better to put up with a few nights of excess emissions than with scores of families who can’t afford to heat their house?

It is about time this council worked for the people who elected it, instead of against by taking away one of the few opportunities people have to improve things for themselves.

Furthermore, the council in this ad fails to explain why any business would be hampered or put off by the ‘‘status quo’’.

Lastly, this is a problem that slowly will solve itself, as any fire to be replaced has to comply with the new standards. H Vullings

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