Like so many other things, the silent majority loses to the loud and obnoxious minority, in the case of the burn barrel saga, environmentalists. It could be considered a sort of class warfare at it's worst, suburban yuppie environmetalists and radical greens vs. the rural majority.

Bills Not Passed

Last year, the county government of St. Lawerence County attempted to pass a bill that would ban open burning of garbage. It was proposed by a minority of people in the county government, and failed to pass. This bill, like many others like it was supported by Don Hassig, the radical green party member, who supports a prohibition on trash burning.

Oswego county has a similar story, they tried to pass a burn barrel bill, but it failed. Courts in Oneota tried to press charges on a man who was burning garbage, but lacking a local ordinence, they couldn't enforce a law that didn't exist. They failed to get a local law passed, because the majority didn't want it.

Maybe those cases are not exactly fair, because they only included rural areas, in which trash burning has a long tradition,and where at least some people are usually strongly against such laws. Those areas include farmers, who have many wastes that are frequently burned, which may be banned by this bill.

Many suburbs and nearby exburbs have passed laws the prevent or limit open burning. Cities and areas with more then 20k since the 1960s have been prohibited by state laws from allowing open burning of trash. But I guess that isn't that surprising, after all in these areas, the pollution and odor from burning garbage would be to great to legally allow it.

So what do you do when a law fails on the local level to get approval? Of course, you appeal to a higher level—the state of New York. You claim it's a problem of state level importance, because pollution effects everybody (not to mention the fact that most burn barrel pollutants are heavy and don't spread far).

Even the State Can't Pass It

That ever so wonderful S3772A, passed unamously in the New York Assembly, has all but died in the Republican Senate. It was hastingly referred to the Rules committee of the Senate on the last offical day of the Senate, probably to it's death. In the New York Senate and Assembly, bills that are referred to Rules are all but dead. The Senate Majority and Assembly Speaker have almost fascist control over rules, nothing happens there unless they command it.

Why did the Senate kill the bill, and the Assembly pass it so readily? The fact is the Republican party draws a signicant part of it's membership from rural upstate, which in general opposes the bill. Powerful members like Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno hail from upstate, and several powerful Senators represent rural areas that oppose this bill.

The Assembly is the other way around, it is controlled Democrats who hail from mostly downstate, and whose speaker, Sheldon Silver, supports this bill. Many suburban and urban voters see little value in allowing people to have burn barrels, and note the pollution and odor concerns that people in their district seem to see of them (when they come out to the country)—eww, that noxious black smoke and rusty barrel is upsetting my view of the countryside.

And When That Fails; Appeal to Op-Ed

All to often, when activists know they are fighting a losing battle, they try to mobilize public opinion to see things their way. Yes, politicians do this all the time, but they also do it far more effectively. When activists try to fight the system, the frequently go to the op-ed and letters sections of the paper to put through their opinions.

If you look through the Oneota Daily Star archives, your bound to find lots from both sides of the debate. Environmentalists and greens often take the alarmist position, pointing out the potential and actual traces of dangerous chemicals, when aggregated throughout a year, for the whole US or NYS, adds up to a signicant amount of pollution (not to mention the fact a year is a long period of time, and rural America is very large). They make it sound like the pollution is clogging up our air right now, and we are dieing from it.

Or on the other side of the debate, some people have pointed out, they don't know of anybody that has gotten sick or has ever been effected health-wise by trash burning. Or those people who point out they have burned trash for years, with no signicant health effects as far as they know, and their land has is no less prestine from trash burning.

Other newspapers have recently carryed letters on this issue, such as the NorthCountry NOW and the local Albany paper, the Times Union. The Times Union coverage is probably the most interesting, because that paper is read by a lot of Albany insiders, and the Albany area is not exactly a rural area—that is compared to a lot of New York. Most of the suburbs and nearby exburbs in this area already have ordiences banning burn barrels, as I stated earlier. It carried a letter on July 24, by an upstate Republican Senator that opposed the bill (I forget the name), and on Aug 2 and 4th, replies to it.

If these op-ed games have shown anything, it is an issuethat is not as under-the-surface as it may seen. The skew of many of the letters for a burn barrel ban, is not clearly reflective of the public opinion at large, or that of many of our representives in the Senate.