BIOMASS THE CRUDE KIND

In the Air Quality Act of 1967, Congress required the Secretary of HEW to develop air quality criteria that would indicate "all identifiable effects from an air pollution agent," which surely must rank among the most sweeping, vague, and generally absurd requirements ever legislated in Washington. In spite of the many (virtually annual) amendments, the Act and EPA's policies of enforcing it remain a nightmare of scientific and technical absurdities that obstinately refuse to make sense until it is realized that they are not meant to promote public health, but de-industrialization .

In 1970, the Sierra Club and other devoted de-industrializers won a Supreme Court decision that the 1970 amendments bar any "significant deterioration" of air quality, which means that an increase of thousands of tons of particulates and tars from New Hampshire's wood-burning stoves is permitted only if some other polluting agent is cleaned up to compensate for it.

To comply with the law, the state can prohibit wood stoves or at least establish a permit system to limit their number (an examole of how it is ruralization. not centralized power that leads

to repressive government). Alternatively, industry can pay the price. EPA can regulate utilities and other industries to reduce their emissions to offset the pollution by the stoves; and there are always the de-industrializers in the masquerade of environmentalists to take the EPA to court if it does not move quickly enough to promote their noble cause.