The neighboring towns of Millinocket and East Millinocket have a unique opportunity to work together to solve an environmental problem while helping to spur economic development and improve an alternative heat source. They should capitalize on it.

A new company, Clean Wood Heat, recently opened a manufacturing facility in East Millinocket with hopes of producing 20 wood-fired boilers a week. As the price of heating oil continues to climb, the company is counting on more people switching to outdoor wood boilers, which are primarily used to heat water.

Next door in Millinocket the town council is considering banning the use of such boilers because they are highly polluting. Communities in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York have already enacted bans.

An owner of Clean Wood Heat, Jeffrey Baker, has proposed a reasonable middle ground. He suggests that the town adopt wood-boiler standards that the Environmental Protection Agency is currently finalizing and that the town prohibit the use of the boilers in the summer, when they are not used full-time and emit more pollution. He also suggests that one of his company’s boilers, which are much cleaner burning than older models, be installed at the Millinocket residence that generated the complaints that led to the proposed ban. Emissions from the boiler could then be monitored, work that could help inform the local, state and national debate over regulating the boilers.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently developing standards for wood boiler emissions. The average wood boiler emits more than 70 grams of particulate pollution per hour, more than 15 times the EPA standard for indoor wood stoves. The most polluting units emit more than 300 grams per hour. Particulate pollution worsens asthma and is linked to lung cancer and other cardio-respiratory diseases.

The boilers don’t use catalytic emission control devices as most indoor wood stoves do. They also are built with short smoke stacks, which keeps smoke near the ground, and with big fire boxes which allows owners to burn all sorts of things that wouldn’t fit into a wood stove. These problems are exacerbated because the units are primarily used in residential neighborhoods.

The EPA is expected to recommend voluntary standards for 2007 that would allow wood boilers that emit less than 24 grams of particulate pollution per hour could bear a sticker touting them as “green.” By 2009 mandatory standards, requiring the boilers to emit less than 10 grams per hour, would be put in place.

Because of their increasing popularity – sales tripled between 2004 and 2005 – lowering wood boiler emissions through regulation will benefit their owners and their neighbors.