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Grant to support wood stove swap program

Award of $25,000 to City of Prineville will go to NeighborImpact to fund the program in an effort to improve local air quality

Recent grant funds will enable the city of Prineville to focus more on its air quality efforts on wood stove change-outs for those who seek them. The Department of Environmental Quality recently awarded the city a $25,000 grant to put toward community air quality improvement. This money will be added to another roughly $8,000 remaining from $19,200 the city received from the DEQ’s Supplemental Environmental Project program to fund wood stove swap-outs in the community.

City Planning Director Josh Smith explained that the money will be passed through to NeighborImpact, which already has an established wood stove swap-out program. The regional nonprofit’s program is intended to help people remove wood stoves that are not compliant with air quality guidelines and replace them with ones that are compliant. The emphasis on wood stove swap-outs follows prior efforts by the city’s air quality committee to improve the three-year average of Prineville’s air quality. The committee was formed in 2014 after the city exceeded the maximum air particulate level allowed during the three prior years.

By limiting outdoor burning to times when smoke will leave the area and hosting free yard debris days, the city has managed to bring its three-year average below the particulate maximum, and local leaders plan to keep it that way. Smith said the city could further improve local air quality by putting more emphasis on wood stove swap-outs. “It’s one of the things lacking in the program. It is one of the most expensive things to do,” Smith said. “In the lower-income range, there is definitely a need.”

The city is, therefore, putting the majority of its air quality improvement dollars toward the NeighborImpact program to help people who need to change out their wood stoves. “The more we can swap out, the more that will help,” Smith said. “Most of the (new wood stoves) have catalytic converters, or they have baffles that create re-burn of the particulates that then don’t go up into the air.”

Meanwhile, the city will continue its outdoor burn day program in conjunction with Crook County Fire and Rescue, and the city is planning to host another yard debris event early next month. Residents will be able to take their yard debris to Crook County Landfill any day from Nov. 9-16 for half the normal price. The city is using another $5,000 DEQ grant to cover the remaining cost. “DEQ has been pretty generous about giving us funds every year through different grant programs to help with air quality,” Smith said.

– Source: Central Oregonian, Article by Jason Chaney

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