MDE Hearing on March 18 re Outdoor Wood Furnaces

Public hearing on the proposed action will be held on March 18, 2009 at 10 a.m. at the Department of the Environment, 1800 Washington Boulevard, 1st Floor Aqua Conference Rooms, Baltimore, Maryland 21230-1720.

The proposed action is briefly described below:

1. Wood Boilers

Amend Regulations .01, .04, .06 and adopt new Regulation .11 under COMAR 26.11.09 Control of Fuel-Burning Equipment, Stationary Internal Combustion Engines, and Certain Fuel-Burning Installations to establish particulate matter emission limits and standards for small wood boilers. (See Technical Support Document.)

Summary of Regulation
The proposed regulation:

• Establishes emission performance standards for small wood boilers available for sale in Maryland after April 1, 2009 that will be implemented in two phases. The first phase prohibits the sale, distribution, and installation of small wood boilers that do not meet an emission limit of 0.60 pounds of particulate matter per million Btu of heat input as of April 1, 2009 through March 31, 2010. The second phase prohibits the sale, distribution, and installation of small wood boilers that do not meet an emission limit of 0.32 pounds of particulate matter per million Btu of heat output as of April 1, 2010;
• Establishes operational requirements for the owners or operators of new and existing small wood boilers. This includes using clean wood, wood pellets made from clean wood, and heating oil as fuel and prohibiting the burning of garbage, tires, asphalt products, manure, and animal carcasses as fuel;
• Requires manufacturers certify that each model meets the applicable particulate matter emission standard using one of the following test methods:

1. U.S. EPA Test Method 28 OWHH for Measurement of Particulate Emissions and Heating Efficiency of Outdoor Wood-Fired Hydronic Heating Appliances;
2. 40 CFR Part 60, Appendix A Test Methods 1-5 and 40 CFR Part 51, Appendix M, Test Method 202;
3. ASTM E2618 – 08 Standard Test Method for Measurement of Particulate Emissions and Heating Efficiency of Outdoor Solid Fuel-Fired Hydronic Heating Appliances; and,
4. Any alternative test method approved by the Department.

• Requires manufacturers to meet specific labeling standards for each model the wish to sell in Maryland; and,
• Clarifies that local and county governments the authority to enforce certain provisions of this regulation and address citizen nuisance complaints that arise from the operation of small wood boilers. Local and county governments also have the authority to implement additional rules or restrictions in response to the proposed regulation.

Public hearings on the proposed actions will be held on March 18, 2009 at 10 a.m. at the Department of the Environment, 1800 Washington Boulevard, 1st Floor Aqua Conference Rooms, Baltimore, Maryland 21230-1720.

Interested persons are invited to attend and express their views. Comments may be mailed to Deborah Rabin, Regulations Coordinator, Air and Radiation Management Administration, Department of the Environment, 1800 Washington Boulevard, Suite 730, Baltimore, Maryland 21230-1720, or emailed to drabin@mde.state.md.us, or faxed to (410) 537-4223.

Comments must be received not later than March 18, 2009 , or be submitted at the hearing. For more information, call Deborah Rabin at (410) 537-3240.

Invest in green infrastructure

By Tom Horton ~ February 19, 2009 ~ for THE BALTIMORE SUN

The stimulus package President Barack Obama signed Tuesday contains tens of billions of dollars to repair and expand the nation's "infrastructure" - its networks of highways, bridges, rail and power lines. Renewing the transportation infrastructure alone will provide some $800 million in Maryland, $800 million in Virginia and $897 million in Pennsylvania.

But what about the equally vital green infrastructure: the trees that shade city streets, the forests that sop up air and water pollution and trap climate-changing carbon dioxide?

Environmental managers around the Chesapeake Bay say the stimulus directs $2 billion to $3 billion nationally toward green infrastructure "and other innovative water quality measures." Beyond that, the package contains tens of billions for the environment and energy. To the extent states in this region can use such funds to renew forests, they could make a real contribution to saving the bay

But what about the equally vital green infrastructure: the trees that shade city streets, the forests that sop up air and water pollution and trap climate-changing carbon dioxide?

Environmental managers around the Chesapeake Bay say the stimulus directs $2 billion to $3 billion nationally toward green infrastructure "and other innovative water quality measures." Beyond that, the package contains tens of billions for the environment and energy. To the extent states in this region can use such funds to renew forests, they could make a real contribution to saving the bay.

This is an area with immense and cost-effective potential that is easily overlooked - the forest doesn't charge for services, it works for free, forever, if we just protect it. These "ecological services" are conservatively worth $24 billion a year, according to The State of Chesapeake Forests, a recent book by the Conservation Fund.

The study did not include all of the forest land's well-documented abilities to cleanse both air and water, or attempt to value its scenic attributes. Nor did it include the value of the wood-products industries in the Chesapeake watershed, estimated at $22 billion a year, with 140,000 related jobs.

From the standpoint of water quality, the greatest value of bay forests is their ability to absorb nitrogen. Forests across the watershed are removing an estimated 184 million pounds of nitrogen each year. The forest stores and filters six times more rainwater than other open spaces, such as grass.

Even in a developed watershed such as the Jones Falls in Baltimore, trees are controlling and cleansing stormwater enough that it would cost $3.8 million a year to duplicate their services by building ponds and other control devices, according to a study by American Forests, a conservation group.

Opportunities to use stimulus money to create jobs by planting more green infrastructure abound, says Sally Claggett, liaison from the U.S. Forest Service to the Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program. The goal of the federal-state Chesapeake restoration is to line 70 percent of all streams and rivers feeding the bay with forested buffers at least 35 feet wide. To date, about 6,100 miles of buffers have been planted, which leaves a whopping 22,000 miles to go. In addition, many cities also have a goal of increasing their tree canopies to improve air quality.

Plenty of green infrastructure projects are "shovel ready." Maryland has an innovative GreenPrint program that maps all the state's ecologically important forests and ranks them in terms of protection. The gaps in this green infrastructure that remain in need of protection and restoration total nearly a million and a half acres, compared with about 650,000 acres already protected.

There's spectacular precedent for combining green infrastructure and national economic stimulus: the old Civilian Conservation Corps, created as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal approach to the Depression. During about a decade, the CCC employed some 3 million men across the nation, planting more than 3 billion trees on more than 2 million acres.

Planting trees today is just as important as it ever was. The cost around the bay to put in a 2-year-old specimen, Ms. Claggett says, would be less than a dollar a tree.

With the bay watershed losing 100 acres of trees every day - more than a square mile a week - and given the huge value of the forest for clean water, clean air, reduction of carbon, production of wildlife and sheer beauty, it's clearly time to rebuild the natural as well as the human-made infrastructure.

Tom Horton, a freelance writer, covered the bay for 33 years for The Baltimore Sun and is author of six books about the Chesapeake. This article is distributed by Bay Journal News Service

MPT February 21st ~ "Sprawl: The Tipping Point"

This Saturday Maryland Public Television is airing a great documentary on the impacts of land use decisions on Maryland's environment and its communities. "Sprawl: The Tipping Point" provides a lucid and visually compelling overview of growth and development issues in the state and profiles some key projects, including Terrapin Run, the Baltimore City Westport project, and BRAC. The documentary was made possible in part through funding from The Keith Campbell Foundation.

TV Premiere: "Sprawl: The Tipping Point"
MPT, Saturday Feb. 21 6:30 - 7:00 PM
This half-hour documentary explores how unplanned growth affects Marylanders' environmental health and their quality of life.

Save the forests and you might save the Bay

By Craig Highfield

This month marks the completion of my first year coordinating the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay's Forestry for the Bay, an education and outreach program that promotes sustainable forest management to private landowners.

Although I have been steeped in Bay issues for many years, 2008 has given me the opportunity to delve into an area that I believe has not received enough recognition or resource allocation within restoration efforts: the conservation and management of private forestland.

There is little debate as to the crucial function our forests provide for the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay. Our forests prevent more than 180 million pounds of nitrogen from reaching the Chesapeake Bay each year. That's more than three times the annual nitrogen reductions from all sources over the last 20 years.

In addition, forests provide other vital services such as cleaning the air and filtering drinking water, reducing stormwater flow, providing habitat, providing recreation and contributing to the economy.

Forests also sequester large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. read more

Green legislation [seeks] to include tree farmers

Tess Hill ~ Cumberland Times-News
February 09, 2009 10:36 pm

CUMBERLAND — Delegate Wendell Beitzel has teamed up with District 33 Sen. Janet Greenip in support of a piece of legislation that will expand the High Performance Buildings Act to include two systems commonly used by Maryland tree farmers.

Senate Bill 243/House Bill 226 will “alter the definition of high performance building to include a building that achieves at least a 2 globe rating according to the Green Globes Program as adopted by the Green Building Initiative; and generally relating to the construction and renovation of high-performance buildings by the state.”

In 2008, the General Assembly passed the High Performance Buildings Act, which gave specific requirements for green buildings in Maryland. However, only one system was offered in this bill.
“Last year’s High Performance Buildings Act was a very important piece of Maryland law, but it needs to go further,” said Greenip, of Anne Arundel County, in a press release. “It left out Maryland-owned tree farmers who are an excellent source of environmentally friendly building materials.”

Beitzel agreed and said only one system was included in the bill, a system commonly used in Europe.

“In Maryland, if we’re going to mandate that we use certain building materials in high-performance buildings, then we certainly should be able to use our Maryland wood products for that purpose,” Beitzel said. “However, that bill only named one method for those buildings, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System.”
The LEED rating system requires wood to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an expensive process that is considered too costly for operations for most Maryland tree farmers, according to forestry tradesmen.

“The Maryland Forest Association has taken an exception to the system outlined in that bill because the state’s LEED system does not allow use of wood from the classification of Sustainable Forest Initiative or the American Tree Farm System (the main systems used by Maryland tree farmers). This means, most likely, wood for our state buildings will have to come from out of state or overseas,” Beitzel said.

The SFI is a program that has created a set of guidelines in order to address key environmental, social and economic forest values. The standards set by SFI aim to promote sustainable forest management, which includes protection of water quality, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, species at risk and forests with exceptional conservation diversity.

The ATFS is a program that has established standards and guidelines to become certified tree farms and also help promote sustainable forests, watershed and healthy habitats.

“I want to do anything I can do to assist our landowners and foresters in Western Maryland. By adding these two systems, we would make sure we’re not preventing Maryland wood products from being used in these buildings if and when they are built,” Beitzel said. “This is a good bill for Maryland’s foresters. We are ensuring that Maryland’s forests and Maryland’s citizens reap the benefits from the projects paid for by Maryland’s tax dollars.”

Mimi Wright, a private landowner in Dorchester County and forest representative on the Maryland Agriculture Commission, said the current bill either totally restricts any wood other than Forest Stewardship Council certified wood or gives other certified wood a second-best rating.

“It eliminates us out of the market or we get second-best pricing,” Wright said. “(The proposed amendments) would open up over 200,000 acres of wood production for Maryland state buildings. And because it will open it up, it will have a far reaching impact to other buildings which the state provides financial support.”

Wright adds there is over 2 million acres of forest land in Maryland and 75 percent is privately owned.

“So rather than argue which certification system is best, it is more important to get more sustainable forestry practices on the ground,” she said. “Now is the time to encourage more sustainable forestry.”

SB 243 is scheduled to be heard by the Senate Budget and Tax Committee on Wednesday.
HB 226 will be heard by the Appropriations and Health and Government Operations committees Thursday.

Tess Hill can be reached at Contact Tess Hill at thill@times-news.com. Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc

ACTION NEEDED ~ further details in previous post

Md. LEED law shuts out many of state’s tree farmers
2.03.09 By SEAN CLOUGHERTY
Associate Editor ~ Delmarva Farmer

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — In agriculture, what is grown locally and sold locally is usually considered to be “green,” too

But Maryland tree farmers say unless a bill introduced in the state legislature is passed, the two could be considered opposites when it comes to lumber.

In last year’s General Session, the High Performance Buildings Act was passed that gave specific requirements for a “green building” in Maryland.

The law named Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED as the only rating system to certify the buildings. LEED certification requires wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a process that most tree farmers in Maryland have deemed too costly for their operations.

That means builders following the state’s protocol for a green building would likely have to get wood shipped from another state or another country.

“It basically shuts out our tree farmers from even being considered,” said Karin Miller, executive director for the Maryland Forest Association. “It closes them out of the market.”

Mimi Wright, forestry representative on the Maryland Agriculture Commission who owns about 400 acres of forestland in Maryland and Delaware, said opportunities for selling wood in Maryland are getting more limited, especially on the Eastern Shore.

“It’s hard to accept that after 30 years of sustainable management, that with the stroke of a pen, my wood isn’t good enough to be used in Maryland buildings,” Wright said.

Miller citied the building proposal of a slots parlor in Rocky Gap State Park.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Maryland Economic Development Corporation are requiring the building to have LEED gold certification.

Any trees cleared by the construction will have to be replanted, but based on the state’s requirements, “it’s highly unlikely that there will be a single stick in there that came out of a Maryland forest,” Miller said.

Last week, Senate Bill 243 was introduced by Sen. Janet Greenip, R-Dist. 33, that amends the High Performance Buildings Act to include the Green Globes Program as an alternate rating system.

Green Globes accepts wood certified by the American Tree Farm System (ATFS) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the two main certifiers in Maryland, covering more than 200,000 acres in the state.

There are about 50,000 acres in Maryland certified by FSC.

A hearing before the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee for the bill has been scheduled for Feb. 11 at 1:30 p.m., in Annapolis, Md.

Rita Neznek, public affairs director for the American Forest Foundation (AFF), said Maryland is not alone when it comes to certification issues.

She said AFF is working with tree farmers in about 25 states that have passed or proposed legislation regarding forest certification and legislation has been floated at the federal level as well.

“It is a national issue,” said Neznek. “Green building is great as long as it recognizes the trees raised sustainably by American farmers as green.”

FSC certification involves annual assessments from foresters, ecologists and social scientists that look at harvesting rates, wildlife ecosystem, threats to endangered species, chemical use and benefits of the forestry operation to the local community.

The group also certifies the “chain of custody” for companies that sell wood products, tracking wood from the forest through milling and manufacturing to the point of sale ensuring that products sold as certified actually originate in certified forests. FSC has offices in 46 countries and is supported by environmental groups.

ATFS is the oldest forest certifier in North America, beginning in 1941 and is endorsed internationally by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).
Forests certified by the ATFS must have a written forest management plan and has to meet nine standards of sustainability ranging from compliance with state and local regulations, reforestation, wildlife biodiversity and air, water and soil protection.

Re-certification by a third-party audit is done every five years and between re-certifications, tree farmers are subject to an annual monitoring surveillance system that randomly selects tree farms for inspection.