Farmer Calls For Burning Cooperation Suggests Grass Growers Back Ecology Efforts

(From For the Record, September 30, 1997:) Quote incorrect: A statement by Vicky Ferro in a Saturday story on grass burning was incorrect. The paragraph should have read, “Ferro said she grew up in rural New Jersey and has many friends who are farmers - none of whom practices field burning.”

Many Eastern Washington farmers have been harshly critical of state regulators’ efforts to douse most field burning and fine growers who flout the law.

But at a workshop in Spokane on Friday, a Whitman County farmer and conservation leader called on the Washington Department of Ecology to beef up its control of illegal burning in the region.

Although tens of thousands of acres of Eastern Washington fields have been torched since midsummer, Ecology sent its first observation planes up only this week - when the burning season is almost over.

Public opinion is already leaning heavily against any type of agricultural field burning, said J. Read Smith of St. John, regional director of the National Association of Conservation Districts.

“If this were put to a public vote, burning would be over today,” Smith told Ecology’s agricultural burning task force.

If growers don’t curtail burning and back Ecology’s efforts to set up a system of inspections and fines for those who burn illegally without permits, the public will insist on a total phaseout, Smith said.

Ecology officials received Smith’s recommendation with visible relief.

The committee has operated largely out of the public eye since it first met in 1992.

They were some of the first supportive words in months the agency has received from the task force. The 10-member group was established by the Legislature to set burning guidelines for a variety of crops under a mandate in the state Clean Air Act to reduce smoke in the air.

The committee has operated largely out of the public eye since it first met in 1992.

It became far more visible recently after Tom Fitzsimmons, Ecology’s new director, said he plans to rely on it to decide what to do about the final phase of a three-year bluegrass burning phaseout ordered by his predecessor, Mary Riveland, in 1996.

Riveland pledged to eliminate bluegrass burning by next summer. Ecology’s new rule slashed bluegrass burning by two-thirds this year.

But Fitzsimmons told The Spokesman-Review last month that he may give growers more time to come up with burning alternatives for the final one-third of bluegrass acreage statewide.

That triggered outrage from Spokane clean air activists and doctors, who said they’d been misled. Fitzsimmons and Gov. Gary Locke have been deluged with hundreds of letters and phone calls from people angry with Fitzsimmons’ stance.

Fitzsimmons has responded personally to many of his critics, Ecology spokeswoman Jani Gilbert said. Several came to the task force meeting Friday to voice their displeasure.

Vicky Ferro said her daughter Elizabeth, who has never had breathing problems, has had to be rushed to the hospital twice since the family moved to Spokane last year. Both episodes came during the grass-burning season, Ferro said.

Their latest scare was Thursday, when thick smoke from field and slash burning filled Spokane’s skies on the last day of field burning in Idaho.

Elizabeth stopped breathing when she went outside to get on the school bus and had to be rushed to Holy Family Hospital from North Pines Junior High.

Ferro said she grew up in rural New Jersey and has many friends who are farmers - one of whom practices field burning.

Gary LePage of Pasco, a potato farmer who serves on the task force, told Ferro that Spokane’s other air pollution problems - including winter air inversions - could have been to blame.

“We’ve only had problems during grass burning season,” an angry Ferro shot back. “I find this very disconcerting.”

LePage said the task force shouldn’t have to hear from the public at future meetings. “I don’t think the Legislature intended the public to be involved” until the committee finishes its work and issues a draft recommendation, he said.

Eastern Washington University health instructor Roe Roberts criticized the task force for doing nothing to curtail smoke from wheat-stubble burning. In fact, there’s much more smoke in the air now, she said.

Wheat-stubble burning “has gone from 40,000 acres to 120,000 acres in the last few years,” she said.

Bluegrass grower John Cornwall of Fairfield complained that the task force now has too many clean air activists on it.

He was referring to veterinarian Patricia Hoffman of the anti-burning group Save Our Summers, the “medical” representative, and City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers, who represents the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority.

“SOS is pressuring Ecology to move ahead with Mary Riveland’s plan - zero emissions by 1998,” Cornwall complained.

But Hal Johnson, a cereal grain producer in Lincoln County, also a task force member, said growers have to learn to work with clean air advocates like Rodgers and Hoffman.

“We’ve got to begin to trust each other,” he said.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: TASK FORCE The 10-member agricultural burning task force was established by the Legislature to set burning guidelines for a variety of crops under a mandate in the state Clean Air Act to reduce smoke in the air.