Hot Springs man wants more clean air rules

The Hot Springs man who was against the town council's resolution to provide for a clean and healthful environment now plans to test the council on how devoted they are to cleaning up the air in the town.

Randy Woods, who has lived in Hot Springs for 38 years, said he wants the council to adopt the Missoula County Clean Air Ordinance, which removes low efficiency wood stoves and allows only Class I high efficiency stoves to remain in a home at the time the home is sold. Woods said he plans to propose his idea to the council at their March meeting.

Hot Springs Mayor Renea Keough said that she "couldn't imagine" Woods' proposal getting passed as a town ordinance. She said there had been a lot of "hurtful rumors" started that the town was planning to get rid of wood stoves and that was never the intention of the resolution, which passed Jan. 8. "These rumors have gotten out of hand and are hurting people unnecessarily," Keough said.

The mayor said that when a proposal comes before the council they can decide not to take action. She said if the council decides to take action, the proposal would first have to pass a first reading and then have a 30-day public comment period. The proposal would then have to pass a second reading and wouldn't go into effect until 30 days after that.

Resolution 2008-003R passed on a 2-1 vote, with council members Robert Dobrovolny and Trudy Berge voting for it and Karen Evans voting against it. "Therefore, be it resolved in accordance with the Montana State Constitution and the goals of the healing community of Hot Springs that the Town Council will support and welcome businesses and entities that maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment and that the council will stand in opposition to those entities that create pollution and destroy the environment," the resolution reads.

Woods said he spoke out against the resolution because it was too vague and open ended. "What does the town mean by support businesses? Are they going to grant loans to businesses?" Woods asked. He said both the town's attorney and insurance carrier advised the council not to adopt the resolution, which Keough confirmed.

She said that a resolution is just a statement of intent. "It doesn't have much impact. It's not law; it's just guidance," she said.

"They keep saying the resolution means nothing, then why put it in?" Woods said. "It means something. Resolutions are a guide to ordinance. They're a guide to the rules. Now the town has made a stance on what they want to do," he said.

Woods said the ordinance was pushed through by about 20 members of the High Country Peace and Justice group. Keough said there were some members of the group at the council meeting, but there were also members from the public at the meeting and in favor of the resolution. According to the Web site at www.montanapeaceseekers.org/highcountry/, High Country Peace and Justice is a group of activists in Hot Springs dedicated to a peaceful and more equitable world through a better environment and justice for all. There was no phone number on the Web site and the group couldn't be reached by press time.

According to Woods, this group is pushing their agenda onto the town. "Twenty people are telling the town what to do and I don't like that," Woods said. He said he is hoping that his proposal will "get the public up in arms" against the group.

Woods, who along with two of his kids, suffer from asthma, said he started the one-man crusade as a way to point out the fallacies of the resolution, but after studying wood stoves, he is now against wood stoves. Woods said that the town went against their legal council in adopting the resolution and opened the town up for litigation. "They need to see the consequences of their actions," Woods said. "If they want to make it a healthy town, maybe they should start with cleaning up the air," he said.

According to the emagazine Green Living, which Woods used to investigate wood stoves, as many as 30,000 lives are lost every year because of wood smoke. Health consequences that people commonly experience after being exposed to wood smoke include eye, nose, mouth and throat tenderness, coughing trouble breathing, tightness of the chest or symptoms related to pre-existing respiratory ailments like emphysema.