Burning Rules To Get New Public Hearing Recent Decision By Scapca Stirring Up Controversy

Spokane County’s air pollution board will vote again Thursday to resolve a long-running controversy over a countywide open-burning ban for yard and garden waste.

In October, the board voted for a less stringent approach that limits the no-burn area to the county’s urban growth boundaries. But that wasn’t the end of the issue.

Because the board rejected its own proposed rule and substituted a weaker one, the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority will have a second public hearing Thursday morning.

Clean-air activists are angry, and the about-face has cost the county a couple of thousand dollars to plan another hearing.

The board’s October vote was a repudiation of SCAPCA’s eight-member citizens advisory committee, which in June recommended a countywide ban on open burning for health reasons.

Now, open burning outside the urban growth boundaries will be allowed until 2000.

At the October hearing, a half-dozen people spoke in opposition to a middle ground the board appeared ready to adopt. It would have allowed open burning in the more rural parts of the county, unless particulates rose to unhealthy levels.

That “airshed” approach would have operated like the county’s wood stove regulations, which shut off burning if air quality grows unhealthy, SCAPCA Director Eric Skelton said.

Retired City Councilman Mike Brewer, Spokane County Commissioner Kate McCaslin and Fairfield Councilman Kevin Ottosen voted against the airshed approach, citing public testimony against further restrictions on burning. Board member Jan Monaco of the Spokane County Medical Association was absent.

County Commissioner John Roskelley was the lone member to support the board’s proposed ban. Roskelley and Spokane clean-air activists blasted Brewer for his vote, because Brewer had said a month earlier that he was leaning toward a countywide burning ban.

This week, Brewer said he’ll eventually support a countywide burning ban, which SCAPCA rules call for in 2000. He did not give a reason why he voted against a ban last month.

“Meanwhile, I’ll listen” to public testimony on Thursday, Brewer said.

Brewer got his SCAPCA seat in a controversial election last February that ousted Spokane City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers, a clean-air activist, from the board.

Rodgers had been appointed by outgoing mayor Jack Geraghty and incoming Mayor John Talbott to represent the city on SCAPCA.

But under the state Clean Air Act, the county’s small-town mayors get to pick Spokane’s SCAPCA representative. They chose Brewer, a bluegrass burning proponent, over Rodgers, who fought for the state’s 1996 bluegrass burning phaseout.

Talbott has vowed to get the Legislature to amend that section of the act next year so Spokane can pick its own SCAPCA member.

“This vote showed what it means to have Brewer instead of Rodgers. One vote can make a huge difference,” said Patricia Hoffman, a veterinarian and founder of the anti-burning group Save Our Summers.

Rodgers testified at the SCAPCA hearing in favor of the airshed plan. “I told them I represent 188,000 people in the city of Spokane, that we are already a nonattainment area for carbon monoxide and fine particulates, and that we need to maintain our air quality,” Rodgers said.

The SCAPCA decision makes a mockery of the advisory committee’s work on the issue, said Hoffman, a committee member.

“We spent three or four months studying this, and we recommended a countywide ban. There were only two opposing votes, and they recommended the airshed approach. Nobody voted for the minimum, which is what the board approved,” Hoffman said.

Now, the board must have a second hearing on the less-stringent rules.

Under state law, “when you make a substantive change to a regulation, you have to go back through the public hearing procedures. The idea is to give interested parties the opportunity to comment,” Skelton said.

It cost SCAPCA a couple of thousand dollars to file the new rule with the state code reviser and plan a new hearing, Skelton said.

The hearing will be Thursday during SCAPCA’s regular monthly meeting, which starts at 8:30 a.m. in the lower-level hearing room of the county Public Works Building, 1026 W. Broadway.