Consensus Always Worth Pursuing Patience Gets Results Ecology Department Doing The Right Thing.

Do clean air negotiations smell like scandal or progress?

Is it a scandal when government negotiates with the businesses it regulates, before slapping those businesses with rules?

No. It’s good policy. It secures buy-in and cooperation by the businesses. The businesses change their conduct, voluntarily. Progress occurs. The alternative is polarization, litigation, angry words, political power games.

Some organizations - environmental activists and their friends in the news media, for example - thrive on polarization. A vicious fight keeps activists fired up and generates melodramatic headlines. But the public interest in social progress should lead in another direction.

The effort to reduce wheat stubble burning proves the point.

Fire is an attractive management tool - particularly for financially strapped farmers, who also are trying to survive regulations demanding that they reduce chemical use, plowing and soil erosion. Fire is a natural, alternative remedy for insects, plant disease, noxious weeds and dense stubble. But smoke aggravates illnesses in certain highly sensitive people.

A few years ago, the state Ecology Department began negotiating with wheat farmers, to reduce the amount of field burning. The result, unveiled last year, was a program to revise farming methods, and to reduce burning by 7 percent a year. Clean air activists shunned the negotiations, then called the deal a scandal because it came from a closed room.

Some scandal: In the first year the deal was in place, farmers reduced burning by 28 percent - four times what was required.

Even that didn’t please the clean air radicals. They filed lawsuits, demanding more concessions and ever-tougher rules.

Tom Fitzsimmons, director of the Ecology Department, believes it’s better for all sides to use their time and staff forging progress, rather than preening for combat in court. He’s right about that.

So, negotiations resumed, seeking ways to improve on the previous - and successful - deal. Talks soured. Then, in a closed room with farmers absent, attorneys for clean air activists and the government struck a new deal. As soon as Fitzsimmons found out, he pulled the plug. Progress can’t occur without farmers’ cooperation.

Today, Fitzsimmons is in meetings, trying to get all parties back into negotiation. The public should applaud his efforts. This is no scandal. It’s good government, pressing patiently for cleaner air.