Bright Idea For Cleaner Air Four Eighth-Graders Win National Acclaim For Ingenious Proposal To Resolve Grass-Burning Conflict

The science project began as a routine assignment for four Sacajawea Middle School girls.

But then the project gained national attention and the girls were awarded $25,000 to continue their efforts. In June, when their success was noted by the The Spokesman-Review, the editorial page lit up with letters to the editor. One writer blasted their proposal as merely a classroom exercise - pseudo-science - hardly applicable to the real world. But overall, their efforts were praised. After all, these were four students doing their very best to resolve a complex problem.

It all started last fall when Sacajawea’s Virginia Ledgerwood-Kral asked her eighth-graders to identify a community problem and then come up with a creative solution.

“We chose grass burning,” said Erin Richardson, 14. And then, leaning forward, she added: “I have asthma. Some days when they’re burning it’s hard for me to go outside.”

Richardson’s personal revelation and the fact that Spokane’s summer skies are sometimes brushed with a patina of blue smoke prompted the four students to tackle the grass-burning issue.

Richardson, Eli Penberthy, Klara Bowman and Lindsey Watts, a group of confident, articulate 14-year-olds, formed a team and then spent evenings and weekends brainstorming.

But their solution, to build a paper-processing plant and convert grass pulp into paper, touched off a minor conflagration.

Grass growers and other critics said the students’ classroom experiments were far removed from the realities of the rolling hills where bluegrass is grown. Nor did critics believe the girls understood the need for farmers to earn a living.

“I don’t think some people understood the amount and depth of research we did,” said Richardson, countering the criticism.

“We do know what we are doing. We’ve contacted all kinds of scientists,” Penberthy added.

Grass farmers in the area have been burning their fields for 30 years. The practice clears the fields of leftover thatch and stimulates the next season’s seed production.

But as the population has increased and the suburbs have spread into what was once farmland, the number of people in the smoke’s path has also increased.

In an effort to ensure that cities and towns aren’t afflicted by the smoke, farmers are required to burn only on the days when the weather forecast says the wind will blow away from the Spokane area.

But when the wind shifts and the smoke blows into town, air quality declines and many people, especially those with asthma, cystic fibrosis or other breathing problems, suffer.

The battle among Washington Department of Ecology officials, individuals who say they’ve been harmed by the smoke and farmers has been fierce.

Just recently, about half of the Rathdrum Prairie grass farmers announced they would voluntarily end grass-field burning over the next decade rather than be forced to do so by government regulation.

The four Sacajawea teens said they wanted to achieve some kind of compromise: Keep people safe and keep the farmers in their fields.

“We wanted to create a viable alternative that would be a winning solution for everyone involved,” said team leader Lindsey Watts. “We didn’t want to put farmers out of business, but we didn’t want to jeopardize the air that people breathe, either.”

In December, the four girls attended the Agricultural Exposition at Eastern Washington University. One of the exhibits demonstrated a papermaking process that used wheat and straw pulp to produce paper.

Impressed with the demonstration, the students reasoned: Why couldn’t bluegrass straw be processed so it too could be used to produce paper?

Thus began a scientific and personal odyssey for the group that involved talking to grass farmers, conducting scientific experiments and research, and writing letters.

The girls entered their final project in a regional science competition. The win there took them all the way from Spokane to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., where a panel of U.S. scientists named the Spokane team the winner of the Bayer National Science Foundation Community Innovation Award.

“These girls represented Spokane extremely well,” teacher Ledgerwood-Kral said. “They put Spokane on the map.”

The group was awarded $25,000. Next year its members will face the same panel of scientists, who will expect them to demonstrate how they used the money to implement their proposal.

Their solution to the problem?

The girls propose that area grass farmers trim the grass stubble to a height of 2 to 4 inches and then burn their fields.

Normally farmers don’t trim their fields that short because the cost of the buzz cut, bundling and transportation of the thatch is prohibitive, said Glenn Jacklin, operations manager for Post Falls-based Jacklin Seed Co.

“For a grower to implement that, he’d be in the red pretty soon,” Jacklin said.

Grass farmers often burn their fields when the thatch is 2 to 3 feet high, Penberthy learned, creating an overabundance of the gritty fog.

Cut the grass shorter and remove the thatch, and the amount of smoke is reduced.

Under the girls’ proposal, local farmers could cut and deliver the grass straw to a local pulp factory, where the straw would be converted into paper. The farmers’ cost of cutting and bundling the residue from their fields would be offset by the profit of selling thatch to the paper factory.

According to the teens’ research, the cost to build a paper-processing factory runs about $20 million.

Local bluegrass farmers have looked at the idea of turning straw into paper, said John Cornwall, president of the Intermountain Blue Grass Growers Association.

“We need some place to go with the residue we’re now required to remove,” he said.

In the past two years, the state has required that bluegrass farmers reduce the number of acres burned by two-thirds. That reduction was achieved, in part, because of a petition signed by more than 300 Spokane doctors concerned with the health hazards of grass smoke. Based on the petition, the state invoked a new regulation that has cut bluegrass burning by 67 percent in 1997.

But a total phaseout isn’t possible until the agency certifies an economically viable alternative to burning. That makes the teens’ research especially timely.

In the meantime, farmers will be allowed to burn the final one-third until a viable alternative to the method is found, said Grant Pfeifer, section manager with the Department of Ecology.

“That certification process will go through a public process,” Pfeifer said.

The process will allow all sides to comment. Ultimately, the Department of Ecology will make a decision as to whether the alternative is practical and economical to farmers, Pfeifer said.

Could paper processing be that viable alternative? It depends. It would require investors interested in building a paper-producing plant.

Would local farmers continue to produce enough straw to keep the plant in business?

When the students first put together their proposal, they hadn’t set foot on a bluegrass farm. This summer they’ve followed the bluegrass harvest by visiting Cornwall’s farm.

They’ve seen a baler and ridden on a rake and combine.

More importantly, they’ve “realized there are a lot of variables out there,” Cornwall said.

“I think they’re realizing their proposal may need some adjustment,” he said.

Eventually grass burning must be eliminated altogether, according to Department of Ecology regulations. But farmers fear that without fire to rejuvenate their fields, their livelihood may disappear.

“Burning doesn’t just remove the residue; it makes more seed,” Cornwall said. “We’re also going to run into a disease problem with no burning.”

Like potatoes, bluegrass is subject to blight.

“To eliminate bluegrass farming would be a disaster for everyone long term,” Cornwall said. “It’s the most important conservation planting on my farm.

“Long term, this is an area with its soil types and topography that needs bluegrass.”

Farmers say growing bluegrass contributes to the region’s ecological balance.

“It keeps the dust down. It prevents erosion, and it keeps the aquifers clean,” Cornwall said.

Patricia Hoffman, president of the clean-air coalition “Save Our Summers,” said, “As long as their proposal leads to a solution that doesn’t involve burning, we’re 100 percent behind the girls,” Hoffman said. “I’ve met them, and they’re just outstanding.”

“Farmers feel threatened,” said team leader Watts. “All they see is people being against them. We’re their friends.”

Will the students’ solution find acceptance? They hope so.

They plan to use the $25,000 to make a video, produce a brochure that explains the paper-producing process, and assemble farmers, legislators and citizens for a sit-down.

Whatever the outcome, many people say they welcome the girls’ efforts.

“Twenty years ago most people had an uncle or a friend who owned a farm,” said Jacklin. “So much of society today is removed from agriculture.

“These kids are obviously from Spokane. They grew up in the city.

“For them to be taking an interest in agriculture - that really excites me.”

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