Neighbors Feud Over Outdoor Wood Boiler

Posted by Danielle Quisenberry | Jackson Citizen Patriot October 09, 2008  


After years of battling with his wood-burning neighbor, Roger Soldano says he is at last free of the cloud of smoke that covered his property for two heating seasons.

"It is just so nice to be able to breathe clean air," said Soldano, who lives off Hankerd Road near Mud Lake in Henrietta Township.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Chad Schmucker last week ordered Richard Cady to remove or make inoperable an outdoor wood boiler Cady had used since September 2006 to heat his home.

Wood boilers, increasingly popular in rural areas as energy costs rise, transfer heat through water lines from an outside structure to a home for both space and water heating. They are inexpensive alternatives to gas or propane heat, but inefficient polluters, experts say, and municipalities locally and elsewhere are enacting regulations.

The ruling seems to back regulators and could have implications on future boiler installations, said Mike Maillard, district engineer in the Jackson office of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's Air Quality Division.

The judge also is prohibiting Cady from incinerating trash, debris and other materials in backyard burn barrels.

Cady had to — and did — comply with the preliminary injunction by Monday. It prohibits burning until the matter is settled before or after a trial scheduled for Feb. 25.

Cady declined to comment, saying it is because the case is pending.

"Roger and Mary Soldano and others will suffer irreparable harm from smoke and odors from such practices ... in the form of adverse effects on their health and loss of use and enjoyment of their property," Schmucker wrote in the Sept. 30 order.

In July, Jackson County Health Officer Ted Westmeier informed Cady his wood boiler, which sat about 180 feet downwind from Soldano's house, was a public health hazard.

Exposure to such a concentration of small particles found in the stove's emissions is associated with heart disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a Michigan Department of Community Health memo.

The health department tested on Soldano's property after he was hospitalized in March with chest tightness and shortness of breath, court records said.

Roger and Mary Soldano have suffered "significant respiratory problems," Roger Soldano said. "It's like having four diesel trucks next to your home."

In court filings, Cady called Soldano a "dictator" and the "neighborhood's bully."

Cady wrote that the boiler, a Woodmaster 4400 produced by Northwest Manufacturing in Red Lake Falls, Minn., is a tested appliance that passed an inspection.

When Cady bought the stove, there were no ordinances in Henrietta Township to regulate it. A unit now may not be constructed less than 300 feet from property lines, according to a new ordinance.

Other townships, including Liberty, Blackman and Hanover, have enacted similar ordinances, Maillard said.

Some jurisdictions, such as Jonesville and Coldwater, have banned them.