Grass-field burning a hot issue once again

BOISE – After a contentious debate last year and in the midst of a prolonged lawsuit, the Idaho Department of Agriculture is trying again to create a new definition of an “economically viable alternative” to grass-field burning.

The House Agricultural Affairs Committee introduced the bill Monday after Laura Johnson, bureau chief from the Agriculture Department’s marketing division, briefed committee members.

“We think it’s very, very important to have the rule defined by the Legislature rather than a judge,” Johnson said.

The Idaho Conservation League, the American Lung Association and Safe Air For Everyone, a Sandpoint-based nonprofit organization that is opposed to field burning on public-health grounds, sued the state in 2003 over Agriculture Director Pat Takasugi’s determination that there was “no economically viable alternative” to field burning.

The new legislation would put Takasugi’s ruling, which he has to make every year under the current rule, into state law. It says a viable alternative “allows growers to experience a financial rate of return over the short and long term consistent with the rate of return that would occur” if fields were burned.

The bill was shot down last year in the Senate Agriculture Committee by one vote after several lawmakers said it ignored questions of public health and would eliminate all incentive to find alternatives to field burning.

Similar issues are being raised this time.

“It is yet another attempt by the department to make it harder for the people of North Idaho to protect themselves from pollution,” said Lauren McLean, community conservation associate for the Idaho Conservation League. “The department is doing everything it can to stack the deck for polluters.”

But Mike Everett, deputy director of the Agriculture Department, said that criticism isn’t valid because the field-burning law’s intent is to protect public health, whether or not this new definition is written into state law.

“We talked to economists, the attorney general’s office, all kinds of folks,” Everett said. “And they all said this is the best step to take.”

Field burning is profitable for grass-seed farmers because it brings on another crop without reseeding.

But concerns center around burning on Rathdrum Prairie, where wind patterns push thick smoke into the Sandpoint area.

The smoke often settles there, leading to potentially serious health problems for peo-ple exposed to it.

“Health and the people on the ground are being ignored for short-term and long-term dollars,” McLean said.