If you’re a reader of more than a few months, you might remember I’m an aficionado of backyard grilling. Pictured at the left is my Brinkman Smoke ‘N Pit Professional, a.k.a., the SNPP as it’s known in the grilling community. It was my first father’s day present, and has been used regularly ever since.
With the offset box, it’s great for smoking meat, but I tend to use it more for grilling, preferring my electric smoker simply for convenience, because if you’re smoking a pork shoulder all day in a charcoal/wood grill, you just have to fuss with it too much.
Regardless, I repaint, refurbish and do regular maintenance on my grill, because you can’t get them with as heavy gauge of steel as this anymore unless you have someone make you one out of a tank. I’m probably due to have some welding work done on the legs, with the only problem being how tremendously heavy it is to move – definitely a 2 man job.
Ok, admittedly, I’m going on a bit. As you can see, I’m like a number of average Joe’s in the nation who actively enjoy their grilling, and it’s a center of many family meals when weather allows. So, it’s tremendously disconcerting to see that the Environmental Protection Agency is overstepping the bounds of common sense, once again, as they begin initial steps to start pursuing “pollution” from backyard barbecues:
The Environmental Protection Agency has its eyes on pollution from backyard barbecues.
The agency announced that it is funding a University of California project to limit emissions resulting in grease drippings with a special tray to catch them and a “catalytic” filtration system.
The $15,000 project has the “potential for global application,” said the school.
and…
The school is proposing two fixes to reduce emissions from barbecues. First, they want to cut back on grease flare-ups. The idea: “A slotted and corrugated tray is inserted immediately prior to meat flipping, and removed immediately after. This short contact time prevents the tray from over-heating and volatilizing the collected grease. This collected grease will then drip off into a collection tray and can be used at the pit master’s discretion.”
But, total capture isn’t “practical,” so a filter and fan are proposed for installation. “The secondary air filtration system is composed of a single pipe duct system which contains a specialized metal filter, a metal fan blade, a drive shaft, and an accompanying power system with either a motorized or manual method. This system can be powered by either an exterior electric motor with a chain-driven drive shaft, directly spinning the fan blade, or a hand-powered crank,” said the project write-up.
Our representatives in Washington are already having to fight the EPA to keep them from regulating water in rural ditches as being a navigable body of water. Now we have to also ask them to keep the EPA away from our lawn mowers and backyard grills?
This type of bureaucratic overreach is why average everyday citizens of the United States are rejecting the policies of Democrats, and soft-headed liberals in general. They aren’t happy unless they’re meddling in people’s everyday lives.
And now they’re moving to install filters and fans in backyard barbecues? God help us all.
The EPA is out of control, and they are a bunch of fascist little morons. I think they should be reined in, but of course the dictator in the White House has no intentions of doing so. Anything to control people’s lives more thoroughly is okay by him.
Thanks to all the folks out there who voted Obama in not once but twice. YOU are to blame!
fascist little morons ? dictator? why not Communist? Kenyon? Illegal alien president? May God help us! I feel like we are experiencing retro Thursday and the place is Alabama in the 1960’s with a bunch of Bubbas commenting. lol
that’s off base. nobody was outlawing the weber grill in 1960 Montgomery. but live in the past if you want, they can still barbecue unmolested back in the past.
Are you accusing me of racism, or what exactly is your point? I know it is a favorite ploy of liberals any time someone says anything negative about Obama, but it is a childish thing to do.
This was a response to anon 12:30; I think anon 1:45 understands.
Look Obama is going to have his little minions which he placed in every Federal Bureau obfuscate every normal American tradition he can to upset every conservative for he knows he has become irrelevant. Netanyahu is laughing all day every day khowing not even the American President’s votes in Israel could topple him. Go Bibi!!!
we haven’t begun to see what the president can do to Israel, s.d. legislature hcr nonwithstanding.
This whole diatribe smacks of political inconsistency. How can you justify hating what the EPA does, but support the push by Thune to re-establish the heavy hand of government at the Surface Transportation Board? Thune is pushing to cripple our nation’s railroads with 1900’s regulatory oversight.
The EPA has been going after lawn mowers, burn pits, wood fired stoves, animal waste, charcoal grills cigarettes and number of other pollutants for some time.
Given the recent activities of a number of government agencies, I am forced to believe the government wants us to surrender our freedoms and become dependent on the government for everything.
The government is not what makes America great. It is the people who make this country great. If you want the United States to be become a great country once again, move the government out of the way.
the technocrats and bureaucrats that have crept into government all these years are now in sufficient numbers to make government something they do to us, instead of for us.