High court petitioned on field-burning

A Sandpoint clean air group is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to overturn a recent Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that grass burning isn’t an illegal disposal of solid waste.

Safe Air for Everyone, a coalition of 1,300 clean-air activists in North Idaho and Spokane, argues in a brief filed Wednesday that the appellate ruling puts public health at risk. The brief was written for SAFE by Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

“Because the stakes are a matter of life or death for many people with asthma, cystic fibrosis, or other lung or heart diseases, we will continue to pursue every legal option to stop the senseless and unnecessary deaths from grass field burning,” said Patti Gora, SAFE’s executive director.

SAFE sued 74 farmers and corporations in the Idaho Panhandle in 2002 in an effort to halt the field burning season. The group said the agricultural practice violates legal methods of solid waste disposal under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

SAFE appealed U.S. District Court Judge Edward Lodge’s dismissal of their case; they lost again last July when a panel of the appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, ruled RCRA didn’t apply to the grass growers.

Gary Baise of Washington, D.C., attorney for the North Idaho farmers, argued they were exempt from RCRA because the ash from field burning isn’t solely a method of disposing of grass stubble but also has a beneficial effect in fertilizing their fields and controlling pests.

Grass growers were expecting the SAFE appeal, said Linda Clovis of the North Idaho Farmers’ Association.

But the chances of the Supreme Court taking the case are slim because the nation’s highest court rejects review on more cases than it accepts, Clovis said. Gora, however, said the court may accept review because the 9th Circuit decision conflicts with at least five other circuit court rulings.