Burton Brown stands beside a pile of trees, limbs and other debris left behind by the April tornado that he has since collected on his property in Flintsone, Ga., to burn. New restrictions from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon limit burning in Walker County, Ga.FLINTSTONE, Ga. — Driving around his tornado-ravaged farm, Burton Brown’s mental to-do list grows with every fallen tree he finds.
“We’ll try to get this, too,” he said, topping a hill for a view of uprooted stumps near his buffalo pasture. “I’ll have to do it by the first of the year. I don’t have much longer.”
He and other Walker County landowners must hustle if they plan to burn downed trees before new regulations go into effect Jan. 1, adding significant costs to burning.
And they have 3,757 of their neighbors to blame for it.
Regulations from the Georgia Environmental Protection Division require that, in a county of 65,000 residents or more, anyone burning debris from land clearing must dig a pit and use a huge blower to form an “air curtain destructor” to deal with the smoke.