House passes bill on field-burning options

BOISE – Strong opposition from most North Idaho lawmakers couldn’t sway the House of Representatives from easily passing a bill Tuesday that creates a new definition for “economically viable alternative” to field burning.

“What this bill does is it reduces any incentive to find an alternative to field burning,” said Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover. “Any cost … would make it not viable economically.”

On a 49-20 vote, the House passed HB 33, which adds the new definition to Idaho’s law on field burning. It says the only viable alternative would be something that achieves the same agricultural objectives and doesn’t cost farmers a cent more, either in the short term or long term. The same legislation passed the House last year but failed in a Senate committee by one vote.

Reps. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, Frank Henderson, R-Post Falls, and Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, were the only North Idaho legislators who voted for the measure.

Others, including Eskridge and Rep. Phil Hart, R-Athol, opposed the bill.

“I knocked on 2,800 doors last year during the election, and a lot of people suffer from grass smoke,” said Hart, whose district lies just northeast of the Rathdrum Prairie.

In 2003, the Legislature passed a law saying farmers can burn their fields each year if the state agriculture director determines there’s no economically viable alternative.

HB 33 “isn’t about whether field burning should be allowed – it already is under state law,” said Rep. Doug Jones, R-Filer. “We’re only putting the definition the director has given the last two years into the statute.”

The bill would guarantee that field burning continues, said House Minority Leader Wendy Jaquet. “When does the state provide a shield for people to make their living?” asked the Ketchum Democrat.

Eskridge said home sales and tourism in his district suffer because of field burning, and the definition doesn’t consider that. “It doesn’t include the cost of medical care that our asthmatic citizens in our area experience when they have to make emergency visits to the hospital as a result of inhaling the smoke in our area.”