Too much smoke necessitates change

I want to thank the Puget Sound Pollution Control Agency for finally proposing a ban on burning waste wood and brush.

These last few years it seems that sunny days are also breath-my-neighbor’s-smoke days. I open my door to greet the beautiful world and inhale large quantities of my neighbors’ burning brush piles. When I first moved here, this was rare. Of course that was 20 years ago when this was a very rural area. Now every piece of property has a house and a man with a chainsaw, a can of beer and a burning pile of God-knows-what.

I live on a few acres of wooded land in Snohomish County and have never burned wood on my property except in a fireplace when weather conditions were appropriate and no burn ban was in effect. I chop up the downed lumber and let the wood waste remain on the forest floor. Imagine that … leaving old trees and brush on the forest floor where they eventually become soil. Wow, what will nature think of next?

Thank you, my local government, for getting the gumption to deal with this important issue.

Guy LaRue