Plan To Limit Grass Burning Draws Fire Farmers Say Proposal Goes Too Far; Clean-Air Activists Say It’s Not Enough

Lungs vs. livelihoods.

That was the theme of an intense debate over grassfield burning Wednesday night at City Hall.

A crowd of 250 packed the council chambers and spilled into the foyer for polite but emotional testimony from farmers, clean-air activists and Spokane doctors.

At issue: a proposal by local air-quality cops to cut the Kentucky bluegrass acreage Spokane County farmers are allowed to torch each year.

The Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority board is floating a proposal to cut burning from 25,000 acres this year to 17,500 acres by 1999 - and then use a “market-based” approach controlled by the farmers to encourage further reductions.

“Our goal is to remove the air-quality impacts of this activity,” said county Commissioner Steve Hasson, SCAPCA board chairman.

But local growers said the proposed reductions are too much of a cut, while clean-air activists said they don’t go far enough.

Dozens of farmers from southern Spokane County applauded as bluegrass industry officials defended field burning and stressed the multimillion-dollar payroll the industry brings to the area.

“We are being condemned for fighting for our livelihood. … Reducing acres of Kentucky bluegrass will do very little to improve the air quality of Spokane,” said Linda Clovis, spokeswoman for the Intermountain Grass Growers Association.

Growers will make concessions to an urban populace upset about the smoke that smudges Spokane’s skies each summer, said John Cornwall of Fairfield, president of the industry group.

But, Cornwall said, risks from grass smoke are more of a “public perception problem” than a genuine health threat.

He said growers would accept a 30,500-acre cap this year - 3,000 acres more than growers burned in 1995 - and cut back to 23,500 acres over seven years.

“Some would say this is too slow, but we need time,” Cornwall said.

But clean-air activists said the industry already has had time - roughly 30 years of promises to cut smoke pollution. They called for a steep cut or an outright ban of field burning and adamantly opposed Hasson’s suggestion that the industry “self-regulate.”

Patricia Hoffman, the Spokane Valley veterinarian who founded the clean-air group Save Our Summers, took a personal approach.

She showed slides of seven people with lung disease - including a 2-year-old boy hospitalized during grass-burning season last fall and a young woman forced to take massive cortisone doses to control acute asthma when the fields are burning.

The audience fell silent as the faces filled the darkened room.

Hoffman pointedly reminded SCAPCA that previous boards had voted several times in the past two decades to curtail burning but never followed through.

“No other industry would be allowed to do this to our skies,” Hoffman said.

Two Spokane doctors tangled over the health impacts of grass smoke.

Dr. John Sonneland, a surgeon and Republican political activist, testified during the growers’ alloted hour. He said most lung problems are caused by heavy cigarette smoking - not grass smoke.

Spokane hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are at their lowest during the summer months of August and September when the fields are burned, Sonneland said.

“All of us should stop, look and listen before condemning a major industry,” he said.

But lung specialist Dr. Alan Whitehouse said Sonneland’s hospital statistics are “simplistic” and misleading.

Several recent epidemiological studies show a direct connection between increased particles in the air and a rise in hospital admissions, Whitehouse said.

“We have a very large increase in the patients we see in the fall who complain about grass burning, … every lung specialist in Spokane concurs,” he said.

Whitehouse said he’s organizing Spokane’s large medical community to call for a total ban on field burning. “It’s inexcusable that 400,000 people in this community are held hostage for four weeks each year,” he said.

The proposed regulation will go to a public hearing later this spring.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MISSED THE DEBATE? Interested in Wednesday night’s testimony on a proposed county regulation to curtail field burning? The Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority workshop was videotaped and will be aired twice on City Cable 5. Times are 6 p.m. Friday and Sunday.