Groups fight EPA approval of field burning

BOISE – Public health groups asked a federal appeals court Friday to cancel U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approval of Idaho farmers’ annual ritual of burning stubble off agricultural fields, arguing that the agency failed to consider health and visual effects of the smoke.

The petition was filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco by Earthjustice, Safe Air for Everyone, the American Lung Association of Idaho and Noel Sturgeon, a Washington State University professor who owns land near the Cabinet Mountains in Montana and who says smoke is degrading visibility in the area.

Under the federal Clean Air Act, lawsuits to overturn final EPA action are filed at the appellate level, rather than district court.

The complaint asks the 9th Circuit to overturn the EPA’s July decision granting the state Department of Environmental Quality’s 2003 request to amend Idaho’s Clean Air Act implementation plan.

The EPA decision allowed the state to make crop-residue disposal an allowable category of open burning. The state made the request after health groups threatened to sue northern Idaho grass-seed farmers for burning fields, which was banned under the original plan.

“The basis of our lawsuit is that the previously approved plan for Idaho said it was illegal to do this sort of open field crop burning, and when it was pointed out that farmers were violating the state plan, the state convinced EPA to amend the plan to allow the practice to continue,” said Kristen Boyles of Earthjustice’s Seattle office.

“We believe EPA approved the amendment without looking at the impact of field burning on the health of Idaho residents and the aesthetic damage the smoke does.”

The state is not named in the lawsuit, and the petition does not ask the court to prohibit Idaho from allowing further field burning this season.

EPA spokesman Mark Macintyre in Seattle said Friday the agency had not been notified of the lawsuit and could not comment until officials had a chance to review it.

Wayne Hoffman, a spokesman for the Idaho Department of Agriculture, said that agency also would have no immediate comment.

Some bluegrass farmers in North Idaho contend they must burn their fields to control weeds and stimulate the soil for the next season. The practice, legal in Idaho, has been banned in Washington state. Some grass seed growers in Washington and Oregon now remove crop residue through herbicide applications or by “strip tillage,” plowing up and baling the stubble to be used for livestock feed.

Opponents of field burning previously sued the state of Idaho for negligence, contending the state is “taking” their private property by allowing smoke from the fields to make their homes uninhabitable. The state Department of Agriculture allows farmers to burn their fields if they have registered with the state and follow certain guidelines.

Thursday, the state Web site that tracks approved crop-disposal burning listed a total of 11,600 acres in North Idaho that were scheduled to be burned.

Patti Gora, executive director of Idaho-based Safe Air for Everyone (SAFE), said the resulting smoke has caused health problems across the Panhandle region.

“We got phone calls from people on oxygen tanks who were gasping for air, visibility was profoundly affected along I-90 at Wolf Lodge Bay near Coeur d’Alene, and we had people at Rockford Bay (on Coeur d’Alene Lake) who were completely surrounded by smoke and had to stay locked into their homes,” said Gora. “It was terrible.”