Farmers Told To Face Up To Air Quality Demands

Washington state clean air cops don’t intend to ban all agricultural burning. But if farmers don’t cooperate to reduce smoke in the air, regulators will do it for them.

That was the blunt message from Tom Fitzsimmons, the new director of the Washington Department of Ecology, in a meeting Friday with Eastern Washington farmers.

Fitzsimmons wants a reconstituted Agricultural Burning Task Force of growers and other stakeholders to decide by next year when burning’s necessary - and when it can be replaced with no-burn alternatives for dozens of crops, including wheat and alfalfa.

He urged the group to leave past animosities behind, including anger over Ecology’s recent Kentucky bluegrass burning phaseout.

Fitzsimmons said he’s “not a fan” of the task force’s work so far. Farmers have wide leeway to burn their crops, including vast acreages of wheat stubble east of the Cascades, and emissions haven’t been cut.

If the growers balk, Ecology will use its mandate under the state Clean Air Act to curtail field burning, Fitzsimmons said.

“If this doesn’t work, Ecology will have to solve it - and nobody will like the solution,” Fitzsimmons said.

Most of the committee members said they’d try to work together.

“I hope there’s life after burning, and I’m committed to look that way,” said John Cornwall of Fairfield, president of the Intermountain Grass Growers Association.

But another member, alfalfa grower Mark Wagoner of Walla Walla, angrily said he may quit the committee.

“I think I may just quit growing alfalfa seed and go on welfare. … it’s just not worth it,” Wagoner said.

“How many times do you have to hear me say we’re not going to ban all burning?” Fitzsimmons asked Wagoner.

“Grass growers got their heads chopped off. Let’s face it, people just hate farmers,” Wagoner replied.

Fitzsimmons said he shares the growers’ frustrations. But farming is one of the last of the selfregulated industries and growers must face up to public demands for improved air quality, he said.

Dozens of growers from throughout Eastern Washington crowded into Ecology’s Spokane headquarters to hear Fitzsimmons and have their say on the controversial issue.

They made it clear they didn’t like his predecessor, former Ecology Director Mary Riveland.

In March 1996, Riveland announced a rule to douse most Kentucky bluegrass burning by 1998. Her emergency edict, based on a petition from more than 300 Spokane doctors, was transformed into a permanent rule that cuts Kentucky bluegrass burning by two-thirds this year.

Riveland’s bluegrass edict has prompted a backlash among farmers, said Palouse grower Tracy Erickson.

“Whitman County has gone bananas burning. Farmers know they are on a two to three year timeline” before burning is further curtailed, he said.

Some 33,000 acres of wheat stubble were burned in 1996 in Whitman County - far more than the 21,227 acres of Kentucky bluegrass burned last year in Spokane County.

Joe Williams, Ecology’s top air quality official in Washington, said Riveland acted on the bluegrass rule because farmers hadn’t cooperated to douse smoke.

“The grass seed emergency rule was an aberration. But it was because no progress was being made,” he said.

Clean air activists at Friday’s meeting criticized the agricultural task force’s past proceedings.

The group has been too heavily weighted toward growers with an economic incentive to burn, said Patricia Hoffman, a Spokane Valley veterinarian and founder of the anti-burning group Save Our Summers.

The task force also hasn’t listened to Eastern Washington growers - including Spokane County wheat farmers - who’ve chosen no-burn alternatives, Hoffman said.

“I’m not arguing all burning should stop. But there’s been a problem with the process,” she said. , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Spring yard waste burning season