Bill Narrows Grass Burning Ban Spokane County Would Be Sole Area Hit By Phaseout Under The Change

Columbia Basin bluegrass growers are fighting back in the Legislature against a statewide field burning phaseout.

This week, their political allies introduced a bill that would weaken Washington Department of Ecology efforts to ban most field burning by 1998.

The new bill was introduced at the last minute and is scheduled for a hearing Wednesday, the last day for bills to be reported out of committee.

House Bill 2216 would restrict the burning phaseout to Spokane County only.

Ecology will oppose the bill, said the agency’s new director, Tom Fitzsimmons.

“We are very disappointed by the introduction of the bill. We were hopeful we’d developed a positive relationship with the growers,” Fitzsimmons said Friday.

An industry leader and Fairfield grower also is skeptical about the bill, which singles out Spokane-area growers for regulation.

“I don’t think it’s really a solution to the problems facing the grass industry,” said John Cornwall, president of the Intermountain Grass Growers Association.

Cornwall said IGGA wants to study the bill before deciding how they’ll testify next week.

The bill is sponsored by Reps. Gary Chandler, R-Moses Lake; Dave Mastin, R-Walla Walla; and William Grant, D-Walla Walla.

Last March, former Ecology Director Mary Riveland ordered the burning phaseout. She acted on a petition from more than 300 Spokane doctors who said the smoke is a serious health threat.

While there was strong support for the burning phaseout in Spokane, much of rural Eastern Washington was opposed to it, said Mastin.

It was “inappropriate” for Ecology to order a statewide burning ban in response to concerns raised in Spokane, Mastin said.

Spokane clean-air activists will be in Olympia next week to testify against the bill.

It would be bad public policy to allow burning in the rest of Eastern Washington while curtailing it in Spokane County, said Patricia Hoffman of Save Our Summers.

“Spokane citizens were downwinders to Hanford’s radiation for years, and now we’d be downwinders to clouds of uncontrolled agricultural smoke,” she said.

“Smoke doesn’t stop at county lines,” Hoffman said.

Another bill introduced recently, HB 1929, would undercut state agencies’ emergency rule-making powers - including Ecology’s.

That’s the authority Riveland used to enact the first phase of Ecology’s three-year phaseout of most field burning.

The phaseout became law after public hearings. Under the permanent rule, bluegrass burning is cut two-thirds this year. It won’t be phased out entirely until Ecology certifies there are acceptable alternatives to burning in place.

That will involve a series of meetings with growers this spring, Fitzsimmons said.

“We’ll work with growers to figure out what viable alternatives might exist. That’s the focus. It’s not about lifting or modifying the (phaseout) rules,” he said.

A hearing on HB 2216 is scheduled at 8 a.m. March 5 in the Agriculture and Ecology Committee, which Chandler heads.

Joe Williams, Ecology’s top air quality official, will be present to oppose it.

Ecology is sympathetic to farmers who fear the rule will doom their bluegrass crop, he said. But burning also means significant medical costs to people with lung disease, he said.

A Washington State University cost-benefit analysis conducted last year showed that the benefits to society of adopting the burning phaseout outweigh the costs to growers, Williams said.

House Bill 1929, to curtail agencies’ emergency powers, was introduced by Reps. Mastin, Grant and Chandler and several others - including Rep. Cathy McMorris, R-Colville, and Rep. Mark Schoessler, R-Ritzville.

, DataTimes