After Mayor Eric Adams declared war on meat consumption by tracking and attempting to mitigate meat consumption, while promoting plant-based diets and alternatives, the city is now going after coal and wood-fire stoves at restaurants, claiming that they are massive carbon emitters, and thus requires new regulations be placed on them.
New York state has also become the first state in the U.S. to ban natural gas hookups and stoves in new buildings, pushing only electric instead.
The New York Post has more on this in an exclusive report:
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has drafted new rules that would order eateries using the decades-old baking method to slice carbon emissions by up to 75%.
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.
This common-sense rule, developed with restaurant and environmental justice groups, requires a professional review of whether installing emission controls is feasible.
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! 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.
Said Paul Giannone, the owner of Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint.
Giannone added that while the air filter is “expensive and it’s a huge hassle,” it also has some upsides.
My neighbors are much happier. I had a guy coming in for years complaining that the smoke was, you know, going right into his apartment and I haven’t seen him since I got the scrubber installed.
Other iconic pizza joints facing the heat 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 — that pride themselves on having their pies baked in coal-and-wood-fired ovens.
A city official said that under 100 restaurants total would be impacted.
One pizza restaurateur, who requested anonymity, told The Post that sensitive negotiations are currently taking place with DEP officials on whether to grandfather in or exempt the dozens of coal-and-wood-oven-fired pizza joints from the mandate.
He said politicians and bureaucrats should stop messing with their crust.
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.
If you f*** 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.
And for what? You really think that you’re changing the environment with these eight or nine pizza ovens?!
The restaurateur, who has a coal-fired oven, fumed.
Some crusty customers also told city officials not to tamper with their slice.
I’m all for responsible environmental practice but tell Al Gore to take one less private jet or something. Give me a break!
I’ve been bragging about this pizza to my family for like five years. Don’t mess with this!
Said Brooklyn Heights resident Saavi Sharma, 32, a financier who brought her parents and cousin visiting from India for their first slice at Grimaldi’s, referring to the former vice president and climate change activist.
Giannone of Paulie Gee’s, said that despite assertions to the contrary, the air scrubbers will not affect the quality of the taste or texture of the pies.
If someone is trying to say that putting the scrubber in changes the flavor of the pizza they’re just trying to save themselves $20,000. No, it doesn’t affect what’s going on inside the oven.
No, it hasn’t changed the taste. It hasn’t changed the pizza. It hasn’t changed our product at all.
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.
The new DEP rules comply with Local 38 of 2015 approved by former Mayor Bill de Blasio — who was widely mocked after he was pictured eating a slice with a fork and knife — and the City Council.
DEP officials said the difficulty in drafting practical rules without negatively impacting restaurants — plus the COVID-19 pandemic — delayed action until now.
The department said it consulted with an advisory committee consisting of restaurateurs to come up with the rule.
The advisory committee and DEP were unable to finalize a rule in that time frame due to the difficulty of crafting a rule to manage technical and cost concerns that are attendant to the installation of emission control devices.
For example, costs for controls for existing cook stoves can be difficult to manage as the spaces in which these cook stoves operate are often aging structures that were not designed to accommodate emission control devices.
In addition, many of the locations where existing cook stoves are used are not owned by the operators of the cook stoves, and changes required to install such devices require obtaining the landlord’s permission.
Department officials explained.
The first pizza joints in New York and the US used coal-fired ovens, which was cheaper than wood. But they take more oxygen to burn, requiring more space and typically built into the foundation of a building.
Stainless steel pizza ovens entered the picture in the 1940s thanks to the emergence of natural gas, and very few new restaurants used coal or wood ovens.
Other city pizzeria using such ovens include Fornino’s in Williamsburg and Motorino, which also has a location in the Brooklyn neighborhood, as well as in the East Village and the Upper West Side.
Lombardi’s, which opened in 1905 and claims to be America’s first pizzeria in America, boasts on its website about its “beautiful, smoky-crusted coal oven baked pizza.”
John’s of Bleecker Street has been in business over a century, including since 1929 at its current location, and states on its website that its “hallmarks… are the coal fired brick ovens that churn out hundreds of crispy pizza’s daily.” A rep at the eatery confirmed that its coal-fired oven was installed before 2016.
Meanwhile, “Mancini’s Wood-Fired Pizza” in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, also may be forced to put in a device to curb fumes. It has an old wood-fired oven, an employee said.
One young customer, 8-year-old Alexander Dumas, loved his first wood-fired pizza Sunday at Fornino’s.
This is the second best pizza I’ve ever had! I’ve had Domino’s and Papa Johns before and this is better. I think this is good like this.
Said Dumas, oblivious to the controversy.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Notice: “A city official said that under 100 restaurants total would be impacted.” You expect me to believe that less than 100 coal and wood-fire ovens are causing all these carbon emissions? Forget about it! This is pure utter nonsense. A single car idling is probably emitting far more than all these pizza ovens combined.
Regardless if this does or does not affect the pizza creation process in any real meaningful way, this is all about more control and mitigating what people can and cannot do.
Get out of the cities. They are run by psychos and inhabited by psychos.
The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the end of his talk is mischievous madness.
Ecclesiastes 10:13
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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Jacob, if someone is ashkenazi mix do they have to return to israel or can they stay where they currently are? i want to know according to the scriptures.
so far i have found syrian, egyptian and iranian mix in the OT but nothing remotely about ashkenazi mix. can you help me out?
There’s a supposedly “organic” bakery here, Hildegard’s Bakery that produces “healthier” pizza using wood-fired brick ovens. They sell both fresh and prepackaged frozen pizza. But when you scan the ingredients list on their packaged frozen pizza sold in natural health stores, they use sunflower and canola oil.
Mayor Adams claims that God speaks to him, but his policies show nothing of the sort.
where else am i suppose to go to ask, if not among the brethren?
i genuinely dont know the answer so i am asking those in the church who many knpw.
Look to the ‘stans’, Turkey, Eastern Europe & the Middle East with the history of the Medes & Persians, with the biblical geneaologies & daily reading, Southern Belle. (Takes minimally more effort than capitalizing a sentence or the self-identifying pronoun for clear communication & less likely miscommunication… You know, literacy, since our Lord is the Word, the way, the truth & the life…. & not the process, gestalt, idol, avatar/gollum, icon, etc. He is THE Master, not a master, & yet He comes and reasons with the people by the word with the ancient landmarks unremoved: and he loves the Jews in spite of themselves, even as he loves us & gave himself for all: be they ‘Ashkenazi’ Jews, Samaritans or whatever.) He’ll be able to sort them all & us aright, & we don’t need to. It’s not part of our commission save to beware the concision & Judaizers (along with dogs & evil workers).
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It’s awful being too proud to hit ‘shift’, or so much as to hyperfocus on the sins of others to become bound in bitterness yet under the wrath of God, &/or arrested in development & sanctification if carnally saved. Christ can give the victory with that & free you.
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The Ashkenazi thing is hardly proven, & nowhere in scripture otherwise, being an antichrist Catholic slur rooted in that tradition & Augustine with his Replacement Theology…..coming of the crusades. Really?
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The black conservative(& Mason, if I’m not mistaken), Thomas Sowell, documented how the Slavic people actually gave the etymological root for the English word ‘slave’ due to their troubled history, and the genetic tracing going on is disproving a lot about such claims & slanders. For all their errors concerning the versions & ecumenism, Answers in Genesis is doing some very good work on all of that. ….and guys like Jim Marrs and Chuck Missler have a lot to answer for on these things, co-adjutating for the Jesuits as they did.
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Not that we need it, having the King James Bible & the Spirit….but evident truth is one of the threefold witnesses of truth with conscience & the word, and it is an aide & additional blessing of God to which we can point when testifying of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Gospel according to the scriptures rightly divided. Not out of bounds.
huh !? please speak plain and thank you for trying to answer.
i do know answers in genesis guy is a fake. he placed trinitarian garbage theology all over that ark replica.
none of them are saved nor know the word of God.
in this dispensation there is no difference between a saved greek or jew but i already know that much.
i wasnt talking about salvation, rather, the return to israel.
i traced the ashkenazi back to europe when some syrian jews did mix, although very few, hence my question.
I guess they blew through the profits on the mandated scrubbers built by cronies with extorted taxpayer money allocated without representation pretty fast, huh? Union built to China built, & there’s no honor amongst thieves. If they’d only get a taste of the fulfillment & blessing that comes along with honest work, maybe they wouldn’t work such overtime on trying to avoid it while pocketing as much ill-gotten gain & power as possible in the meantime. Making their non-election & bondage, separation from God, sure.