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Klamath County approves more funding for wood stove exchange program

The Klamath County Board of Commissioners on June 6, 2023. From l-r, Vice Chair Kelley Minty, Derrick DeGroot, and Chair Dave Henslee.
Jane Vaughan
/
JPR
The Klamath County Board of Commissioners on June 6, 2023. From l-r, Vice Chair Kelley Minty, Chair Derrick DeGroot, and Dave Henslee.

Klamath County commissioners passed an agreement on July 2 to expand a program designed in part to reduce the County’s annual emissions by exchanging wood stoves with cleaner, more efficient heaters.

The new grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, which totals roughly $3.9 million to the County, will continue and expand on previous efforts to exchange wood burning stoves with cleaner devices approved by the EPA. These include electrical units like heat pumps, propane, natural gas and geothermal heaters in addition to EPA-approved wood-burning and pellet-heating devices.

In 2009, Klamath Falls was named a “nonattainment area,” meaning it did not meet the EPA’s national air quality standards for the pollutant PM 2.5. This inhalable particulate matter causes adverse health effects especially in infants and older adults with heart or lung diseases.

According to project documents, Klamath Falls detected more than double the amount of PM 2.5 required to meet the EPA’s air pollution standards for “attainment areas” from 2016-2018.

PM 2.5 particles are emitted from a variety of sources, although project documents show that “Winter air pollution from residential wood-burning stoves and fireplaces contributed at least 44% of the overall PM 2.5 emissions” in Klamath Falls. The County received an initial award of $1.8 million from the EPA in 2020 which started the project of changing out wood-burning stoves.

In November 2023, another $4.5 million grant was awarded to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality from the EPA. In the time between the first and second grants, roughly 115 wood stoves were changed out.

“The current program that’s going on right now is almost finished,” said Klamath County Public Health Director Jennifer Little in the July 2 meeting. “They’ve almost expended all those funds and done their change-outs.”

Klamath County is expected to swap out between 210 and 323 wood stoves within the next four years, resulting in an estimated PM 2.5 emissions reduction of 9.93 to 15.27 tons per year.

The agreement specifies additional efforts to “weatherize” 100 homes, which includes insulating homes and other “activities necessary to undertake heat-related improvements.”

The money will be sent in installments over a four-year period to Klamath County and directed as needed to the South-Central Oregon Economic Development District and Klamath Lake Community Action Services.

The new funding also includes a new special emphasis on providing these services to “underserved populations that rely on wood for heating.” The responsibility of making sure money is being targeted towards these households will belong to a new Klamath Air Program Coordinator, who is supposed to be hired before the end of the summer.

Low-income households in the Air Quality Zone in Klamath Falls can apply for the Woodstove and Weatherization Changeout Program using this website.

James is JPR's 2024 Charles Snowden intern. A recent graduate from Oregon State University, he was the city editor of OSU’s student-led publication, the Daily Barometer and he hosted a radio show on KBVR FM.