‘Cost Us a Fortune’: NYC Wants Pizzerias With Coal, Wood Fired Ovens to Cut Emissions by 75%
“And for what? You really think that you’re changing the environment with these eight or nine pizza ovens?!”
Dude. This won’t fly!
New York City Department of Environmental Protection has new rules to force pizzerias using coal and wood fire ovens to cut emissions up to 75%. From The New York Post:
“All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers said in a statement Sunday. “This common-sense rule, developed with restaurant and environmental justice groups, requires a professional review of whether installing emission controls is feasible.”
It does not mean the pizzeria has to shut down. The owners have to buy an expensive filter along with a lot of maintenance:
Under the mandate, restaurants with coal-and-wood-fired ovens must hire an engineer or architect to assess the feasibility of installing emission controls devices to achieve a 75% reduction in particulate emissions.
If this report concludes that a reduction of 75% or more cannot be achieved, or that no emissions controls can be installed, it must identify any emission controls that could provide a reduction of at least 25% or an explanation for why no emission controls can be installed.
The restaurant will be allowed to apply for a variance or waiver, but must providence evidence to prove a hardship.
Pizzeria owners are not happy about the possible new regulations:
The rule could require pizzerias with such ovens installed prior to May 2016 to buy pricey emission-control devices — with the owner of one Brooklyn joint saying he’s already tossed $20,000 on an air filter system in anticipation of the new mandate.
“Oh yeah, it’s a big expense!” said Paul Giannoni, the owner of Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint. “It’s not just the expense of having it installed, it’s the maintenance. I got to pay somebody to do it, to go up there every couple of weeks and hose it down and you know do the maintenance.”
Giannoni said the filter has made his neighbors happier since it’s not filling up the apartments above the joint with smoke and smells.
Giannoni claimed that the air scrubbers don’t affect the pizza. He claimed if someone says otherwise, they’re trying to save $20,000.
Yes, how dare they not want to spend $20,000 on the vent.
The New York Post mentioned the rule would impact fewer than 100 joints in the city. Those include “Lombardi’s in Little Italy, Arturo’s in Soho, John’s of Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, Patsy’s in Turtle Bay and the Upper West Side and Grimaldi’s near the Brooklyn Bridge.”
One person told The Post the government needs to mind its own business. These people know how to make a proper pie:
“This is an unfunded mandate and it’s going to cost us a fortune not to mention ruining the taste of the pizza totally destroying the product,” the restaurateur, who has a coal-fired oven, fumed.
“If you f—k around with the temperature in the oven you change the taste. That pipe, that chimney, it’s that size to create the perfect updraft, keeps the temp perfect, it’s an art as much as a science. You take away the char, the thing that makes the pizza taste great, you kill it,” he claimed.
“And for what? You really think that you’re changing the environment with these eight or nine pizza ovens?!” the restaurateur added.
Brooklyn Heights resident Saavi Sharma had a great response: “I’m all for responsible environmental practice but tell Al Gore to take one less private jet or something. Give me a break!”
Sharma brought his cousin and parents from India to Grimaldi’s after raving about it for five years.
Sharma told the city, “Don’t mess with this!”
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Comments
Is it concern over the oh so evil pollution? Or, is it the overwhelming desire to throttle the joy out of everyone’s lives? That no matter what you do or how you do it, it is wrong?
The goal is demoralization. The leaders on the left aren’t crazy. They know the more nonsensical and obviously not true things people are forced to accept, the more demoralized they are and unable to resist real, harmful changes.
It breaks a person to have to accept obvious lies. That’s why they do it so much.
When, oh when, will the time come that these people are given Lousville Slugger shampoos, or encounter the famous Heathkit do-it-yourself gallows kit?
Yogi Bear may sleep till noon, but before it’s dark he won’t find any pizzas in New York.
And, in my case that is a grr-causing thing.
“Pizza with Dumb-o-crat characteristics.”
I think we all understand that the vile Dumb-o-crat apparatchiks’ insane, capricious, economically destructive, unworkable, obnoxious and tyrannical “green” diktats are about exerting and expanding power and control over the peasants of the proletariat.
The Dumbs’ schemes are as manifestly ill-conceived, callous and indifferent to human suffering as any plan that was imposed by Stalin or Mao.
NYC: There’s nothing we can’t ruin.
Why not pack up and move the business, that is the only lasting solution, get out of NYC.
Yep. There is a whole Nation outside of NYC where a handcrafted pizza place v national chain store would be enthusiastically welcomed and supported.
I have not been there, but my unbiased friend from NYC tells me that the best pizza in the whole world is made there in wood and coal-fired ovens—well, I mean it used to be made there.
This is the wrong approach. Pizza is very bad for health, so it should be outlawed. It primarily affects people in vulnerable communities. If pizza were outlawed, the huge IQ gap and the alarmingly gigantic differential in crime statistics would disappear overnight. Soon after pizza is abolished, kelp munching denizens of the formerly disadvantaged communities will be inventing new cancer cures and propulsion systems to bring us to the stars.
Re: Giannoni said the filter has made his neighbors happier since it’s not filling up the apartments above the joint with smoke and smells.
Based upon the above observation, I am OK with this new rule.
It sounds like the pizza place is a nuisance.
Hmmm. Let’s apply that logic.
An airport is built away from large population areas. Soon, population moves to the area of the airport to support the functions and the concomitant activities and jobs in that area.
Soon, people build houses and apartments, sometimes in the landing zone.
Then, the people who bought or rented the houses complain about the noise and the smell, and how much if a nuisance it is.
So, by your standards, we should shut down the airport because it is a nuisance.
How about if you rent an apartment or buy a house above or near a pizza joint, and then don’t like the smells… move out.
Or maybe not choose to buy/rent in a mixed use zoning area in a jurisdiction where wood fired ovens are legal and thus a possibility as a new business to be established below your dwelling? That’s part of the risk of mixed use zoning in a vibrant urban landscape.
Suburbs zoned single family residential don’t have the same problems but they also ain’t got a local mom and pop pizza operator with a wood fired oven in a 3/4 block radius for the most part.
“NYC wants Pizzerias to cut emissions 75%”
That’s the same as saying: “NYC wants Pizzerias to move their businesses elsewhere”
And let this be a warning to entrepreneurs who may be thinking of starting new businesses in NYC.
Yeah. But my neighbor can cook some obnoxious ethnic food that smells like shït, and I am an asswhole for complaining.
Be careful not to eat it.
Do you get it yet?
“Environmentalism”/”climate change” is NOT about “the environment” or “saving the planet.”
It is 100% about CONTROL.
YOU are the carbon they want to reduce.
DEP spokesman Ted Timbers is opposed to burning wood. Ha. Ha.
Well, of course, those are his cousins.
I recall when Coopers BBQ (famous Texas BBQ joint in Llano, Texas) was following in the footsteps of other legendary Texas BBQ joints (Blacks, Kreuz) and wanted to open a location in downtown Austin to mine the tourist / visitor / convention / local trade. It took years, and when it finally opened I had a chat with the pitmaster about why it took so long.
Turns out that the eco-warriors in the City of Austin bureaucracy insisted that they had to retrofit their very expensive buildout in one of the new downtown hotels and install what amounted to very pricey air scrubbers (he said the cost was over $200,000), because, of course, making Texas BBQ requires burning wood . . . LOTS of wood.
That Franklin’s, Stubb’s, and hundreds of existing local BBQ joints weren’t required to do so (existing places are, at least for now, grandfathered in) mattered not to the ecowarriors.
Barrier to entry and keeping competition low. It’s amazing what and existing business can do when they grease the palms of the local bureaucrat and politician.
Just like those third world countries we look down on.
We look up to them now!
This isn’t 1905 New York City anymore… it’s Hell’s Kitchen for real 24/7/365 everywhere.
On a very happy note, one of the top pizza restaurants in the country… often Numero Uno is Moose’s Tooth in Anchorage. While the city council is … gasp,,.. Maoist Blue… no one and I mean NO ONE would risk life and limb to interfere with their pizzas. Thinking of a Carnivore right now….. yum.
As stated in many other posts. If you live in New York and other shitholes, embrace the suck or move out.
Well, all those who voted for it should embrace it.
Hasn’t Congress already made “clean air” and the reduction of CO2 emissions federal issues? Shouldn’t this have removed any authority the states (and their subdivisions) had over air quality and CO2 limits? California had its own emissions standards for motor vehicles, but when the federal government created national air-quality standards, Congress had to give California a carve-out to continue to make and enforce its own, more stringent, rules. Does New York or New York City have leave from Congress to make and enforce its own air quality and CO2 standards? Once Congress deigns to exercise its authority by way of the commerce clause, it’s jurisdiction over the subject of the regulation becomes exclusive.
Leftists don’t work that way. There have to be commissars spreading out everywhere to ensure each and every person is acting in accordance with Official State Policy. And better to have a suffocating blanket of overlapping laws than one law that people can claim to understand. The central tyranny views the state enforcers as valuable cogs in the tyranny.
Kathy Hochul dreams at night of the Amazon Jungle reclaiming Manhattan. Meanwhile, all the money she’s vacuuming from these local businesses isn’t even going to make Another Tree Grow in Brooklyn.
Does that mean the answer to why The Caged Bird Sings is lack of Another Tree….
It might be more cost-effective to move their pizzarias to States and Cities that are more “friendly.”
Everyone has to make sacrifices except for the people whose sacrifice would actually have an environmental impact
Well, that’s exactly the way the proggies address guns.
This should be a First Amendment issue. After all, the aroma of that wood oven baking pies is part of their advertising, right? You’re taking away their method of advertising their product.
(Fight fire with fire, eh?)
You think that’s any easy way to victory?
environmental justice groups
anyone really surprised to see that phrasing??
A rumor I’m trying to start says Al Gore is starting a pizza aroma credit system…
I thought it was a new air fryer since he expends so much hot air. That or developing an oven that runs on the exhaust of his private jet.
And Lesley Gore sang: “It’s my pizza and I’ll cry if I want to. You would cry too, if it happened to you.”
Any rumor you can start connecting politicians with pizza is guaranteed to serve America well.
Ask John Podesta.
I admit to having two thoughts about this. First of all, I grew up in the restaurant business. Cooking in my dad’s Chinese restaurant paid for college without loans. My kids all have worked in restaurants, some cooking, and a son eventually took a parallel route and became an international award winning master brewer. I sympathize thoroughly with the restaurateurs because I know how hard much sheer hard work it is to support yourself in that business.
But sometimes you just have to step back and look at the situation candidly. First of all, if you supported the political regime that does this to you, you deserve what happens. You might want to rethink your political priorities. Second, sometimes business just will no longer work where you are. Twice my family moved to different states to open a new [and very successful] Chinese restaurant. Maybe it is time to move you and yours to somewhere where the government is not trying to shut you down.
Subotai Bahadur
Remember when Bill Clinton told the Godfathers Pizza exec to just raise prices to cover the new taxes? These pols have no idea about what it takes to run a business. As you so well know, no one HAS to eat out. Building and maintaining a restaurant and its reputation is so important and hard. These pols are used to forcing people to abide by their decisions.
Variation on that theme: I took my skill set where I would be paid a wage that let me put a few bucks away after living expenses. My California employer wouldn’t cough up, and no one was hiring.
The elites would be happy if average people are unable to eat pizza–they really want us to eat bugs and manufactured meat, whatever that is.
The left won’t be happy until they have sucked all joy out of life
“All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers said in a statement Sunday.
LOL.
I think that won the NEw York City prize for dumbest justification attempt for an insane policy based on whacky delusions and the unabiding hate of all things human. Wow.
This guy, and everyone involved in this “policy” really deserve to to be taken out of civilized society and put behind bars. These are truly dangerous people.
This society has to get back to treating lunatics and criminals as the lunatics and criminals they are or we are going to descend into something uglier than this world has ever seen. And that is something very, very, VERY ugly.
CO2 is NOT “pollution”.
As with lefty “gun violence” numbers, which are comprised, more than half(!!), of gun suicides, whenever leftists say “pollution” these days they are not talking about pollution.
“All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants…”
Now do excrement in the streets.
NY Post Article on banning wood fired Pizza Ovens:
But how many pizzas would you have to order to equal just one trip on John Kerry’s private jet? In 2021, Kerry’s private jet emitted an estimated 116 metric tons of carbon in less than a year. Private jets emit up to 40 times as much CO2 per passenger as commercial flights and by comparison, the carbon footprint of a wood-burning stove (a reasonable facsimile of a pizza oven) is barely measurable.
The 8 Billion Trees project estimates that the “carbon footprint of wood-burning stoves” can be up to 15.6 grams an hour or 374 grams a day. This is measured in grams, not metric tons. You would have to burn that stove for 310,160 days — that is, 849 years — to equal what hypocrite John Kerry puts out in a year.