The American Lung Association announced a project that will pay individuals in Southern New Hampshire to swap out their old woodstoves.
The money for the program comes from a company’s settlement with the EPA.
The project provides consumers from Merrimack, Hillsborough, and Rockinghman counties vouchers to replace old, inefficient wood stoves, with new clean burning ones.
The vouchers are worth anywhere from one to three thousand dollars, and can be used for pellet stoves, or wood-burning stoves.
Ed Miller of the American Lung Association, which is helping administer the program.
Miller: This project’s really a win-win for everyone, it’s gonna provide over 183,000 dollars for small business, and more than that the whole community is gonna benefit because of clean air in the southern NH area.
The funds come from a settlement between the EPA and Manchester’s G&K Services, a laundry company that washes towels contaminated with industrial oils and solvents.
In 2008 an EPA inspection found that the company had not installed proper air emission controls.
Visit the program's website with the American Lung Association for more information, and a list of participating retailers. Ed Miller recommends that interested parties not wait to apply, as a similar program in Massachusetts was used up in about three weeks.
