Burning questions

Earlier this week, we aired a story about rural communities’ efforts to stop backyard trash burning…burn barrels. We covered this issue for years, mostly through David Sommerstein’s stories. Here’s one.
So Monday we reported that the NY DEC says a new open burning law will be made public very soon. That prompted this comment from a listener:

I was very deeply angered with the Environment Report on the Monday 03/02/09 … the report never mentioned at all that burning garbage is already illegal in all of NYS. See New York Code of Rules and Regulations Title 6 Part 215.2(a) under the Conservation Law and you’ll find that burning garbage is a misdemeanor crime with a minimum fine penalty of $375 and up to $15,000. Your report gave the impression that the only consequence to burning garbage is pollution.

We asked the DEC, and heard back from the regional air engineer in charge of this for the agency in Region 6, Thomas Morgan. He wrote back with some history of the current regulations. There’s a difference between “rubbish” and “trash” which goes back to the 1960s, when the state health department was in charge of trash burning.

Unfortunately, many of the terms in the regulation are very outdated. What the regulation defines as “garbage” is vastly different from what today’s average person thinks of as being garbage. Part 215 back then and still to this day, defines “rubbish” as being what people think of as household garbage. If there is no local or county law to the contrary, “rubbish” is allowed to be burned in rural areas outside of incorporated villages and outside of cities. A quick glance at the list of stuff in the “rubbish” definition that is currently allowed to be burned is horrifying.

Morgan also noted that back when he started at the DEC, in 1978, there were 33 open dumps in St. Lawrence County alone, and all of them burned “garbage.”