Stubble Deal Burns Activists Industry Promise To Cut Wheat Field Burning In Half Called Meaningless After Acreage Soared
An industry-backed pact on wheat-stubble burning is a big step backward and threatens air quality in Eastern Washington, six public health and environmental groups said Wednesday.
The groups, including the American Lung Association of Washington, called on Gov. Gary Locke to block the proposed agreement between the state Ecology and Agriculture departments and the Washington Association of Wheat Growers.
Reached earlier this month, the voluntary proposal to cut smoke in half over seven years will leave Spokane’s skies permanently smoky because wheat burning has increased dramatically since 1995, the groups said at a Wednesday press conference at City Hall.
The proposed plan “neutralizes” the clean-air gains of cutting bluegrass field burning from 60,000 acres in 1996 to a few thousand acres last year, said Tim Connor of the Northwest Environmental Education Foundation.
“This will turn back the clock to the day when an economically powerful but small group of farmers gets to decide how the Clean Air Act is implemented,” Connor said.
A voluntary agreement simply is signed between the parties and doesn’t go to public hearing. That cuts out Spokane’s medical community and people with breathing problems, the critics said.
Locke should insist on mandatory burning restrictions with acreage caps that protect public health, as the Clean Air Act allows, they said.
That tougher approach was used during the administration of former Gov. Mike Lowry to curtail bluegrass field burning.
The clean air groups want a 20,000-acre burning cap on wheat stubble to be effective later this year - far less than the 228,928 acres burned in 1998. The wheat growers have proposed no acreage cap, but have pledged to cut emissions in half over seven years.
Patricia Hoffman of Save Our Summers, a Spokane Valley veterinarian who represents public health on the state’s Agricultural Burning Task Force, announced Wednesday she’s quitting the task force in protest over the wheat deal.
There’s only one seat for a public health representative on the 10-member task force, which is dominated by seven industry representatives, Hoffman said.
“My continued presence only serves to legitimize what has become an illegitimate process,” she said.
While the task force met over the past six months to discuss the issue, Ecology’s top brass was negotiating behind the scenes exclusively with growers for a voluntary agreement that violates the state Clean Air Act, she said.
“I regret her decision to resign,” said Mary Burg, Ecology’s top air quality official in Olympia. “SOS brings an important perspective to the task force.”
Ecology considered the SOS proposal for a 20,000-acre cap and met with clean air groups in early December, but decided to go with the wheat growers’ plan to reduce emissions, she said.
That doesn’t mean public health will be compromised, Burg said. “A 50 percent reduction is an immediate, tangible result for public health,” she said. “Our immediate focus is to try to get (smoke) reductions for this burn season.”
If the voluntary approach doesn’t work, Ecology can always use the hammer of mandatory rule-making later, she said.
The wheat growers know if they don’t succeed, Ecology can force them into compliance, said Hal Johnson, a Davenport wheat farmer who represents the cereal grain industry on the agricultural task force.
The Spokane groups made pointed comparisons between Ecology Director Tom Fitzsimmons’ willingness to cut a voluntary deal with wheat growers and the action of his predecessor, Mary Riveland.
In 1996, Riveland invoked an emergency rule to phase out most bluegrass field burning over three years.
She acted after receiving petitions signed by more than 300 Spokane-area doctors, who said the clouds of smoke from torched fields in the late summer and early fall triggered serious lung problems in their patients.
Ecology’s rule went to public hearings and withstood several court challenges.
Meanwhile, wheat-stubble burning escalated from 125,591 acres in 1996 to an estimated 228,928 acres last year.
If Ecology decides to base the 50 percent cutback on what was burned in 1998 - a decision that hasn’t been made yet - that would still leave 114,000 acres to be torched after seven years, the critics say.
When it proposed the bluegrass rule, Ecology hired a team of Washington State University economists to weigh the costs and benefits, as the Legislature requires.
The WSU study concluded the cutback would cost growers $5.6 million a year. But it also said that impact was outweighed by $8.4 million in public health benefits from less smoke in the air, including avoided medical costs.
The WSU report set a public health cost of $210 an acre on field burning.
If that figure is applied to last year’s wheat-stubble burning, “that’s a $48 million public health subsidy to the wheat industry this year,” Hoffman said.
Ecology hasn’t attempted to apply the bluegrass cost-benefit figures to the wheat stubble issue, Burg said.
Cindy Thompson, director of the American Lung Association’s Spokane branch, read a message from Dr. Michael McCarthy, a Spokane pediatric lung specialist and Lung Association board member who supported the bluegrass cutback.
“The burning of grass fields, which for decades endangered the lung health of many in Spokane and elsewhere, pales in comparison” to the escalating danger of wheat-stubble burning, McCarthy said.
“We urge wheat growers to end this practice and to cease placing their convenience ahead of their neighbors’ lives and health,” McCarthy said.
Wheat growers are trying to reduce their emissions, Johnson said. “If we can do more, we’ll do it.”
Other groups participating in Wednesday’s press conference included the Washington Environmental Council, Citizens for Clean Air and the Sierra Club.
This sidebar appeared with the story: BIG DROP The clean-air groups want a 20,000-acre burning cap on wheat stubble, effective this year. In 1998, 228,928 acres were burned.