LOWER TOWNSHIP – A complete ban on outdoor wood burning furnaces breezed through its first reading at an otherwise contentious council meeting here on Monday night.

Second reading and public hearing will be at the scheduled Feb. 22 meeting.

The proposed ordinance will prohibit the furnaces entirely, and calls for penalties of up to $500 per day or imprisonment up to 90 days, or both.

“Compliance with this article may also be compelled and violations restrained by injunction of a court of competent jurisdiction. Any person who violates any provision of this article shall also be subject to a civil penalty of not more than $500, to be recovered by the Township of Lower in a civil action. Each week’s continued violation shall be, for this purpose, a separate and distinct violation,” according to the ordinance.

Despite the total ban on the heating devices that is proposed, existing furnaces will be grandfathered in. Those outdoor boilers “…existing at the time of the adoption of this article” can continue in use, with the requirement that no extensions or enlargements can be made to the equipment and that any furnace not used for seven consecutive months “shall not be permitted to be reestablished as a nonconforming use, and must be immediately removed by the property owner from the subject premises.”

“I don’t know how we monitor that, without setting up watch towers, or some kind of surveillance,” said Beck, commenting on the requirement that existing boilers not fall into disuse for seven consecutive months.

“So there might be an issue of enforcement or proof there, but this was done in response to complaints from residents,” Beck said.

The first reading was pushed to the Feb. 6 work session after the Jan. 18 scheduled meeting was cancelled because no quorum of council members existed. (See related story). Some 15 residents waited at the Jan. 18 meeting for about an hour, expecting that the ordinance would be heard and discussed at that session.

The South Andrielle Lane area residents appeared at several consecutive council meetings in August and September to voice complaints about an outdoor wood furnace in their neighborhood. The township’s planning board took up the issue in October, ultimately recommending that the devices be banned

Also, in October, the five member township council unanimously passed a separate ordinance permitting local residents to file disorderly conduct complaints regarding smoke and fumes.

According to Andrielle Lane residents, municipal court complaints relying on that ordinance are pending against Pawel Banach, who has operated an outdoor wood furnace on his one-acre lot since June 2010. Resident Nick Thompson said that municipal court Judge Thomas Hillegas made a finding of probable cause on the complaint he and his neighbors filed against Banach in late October.

Thompson said the evidence of “nuisance smoke” was supported by residents’ observations and videotape of the scene. The matter had not been heard at the time of Thompson’s statements.

Banach, a township homeowner for ten years, has previously said that he checked with township authorities before buying and installing the outdoor furnace.