After their latest courtroom setback, local clean-air advocates vowed to soldier on against controversial field burning practices of North Idaho grass growers. That threat, however, appears to be toothless – now that the U.S. Supreme Court has basically sided with lower court decisions in favor of the farmers.

And that’s unfortunate.

Although grass growers and state regulators have reduced the impact of their hazardous practice, evidence remains, both scientific and anecdotal, that smoke from the farmers’ large fires obscures bright summer days and harms human health. The anti-burning group Safe Air For Everyone contends that field smoke has killed three people in recent years. Skeptics need look no further than state Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, an asthma sufferer, who sided with most North Idaho representatives this year in an unsuccessful fight against legislation that strengthened the farmers’ right to burn. Keough testified that there are times during the burn season when she wonders whether she’ll survive.

The farmers can ignore such testimony and tales of other sufferers of respiratory diseases, confident that their way of life is supported by the state and the federal judiciary. Or they can remind themselves that they are part of a growing, changing region that has slowly changed its attitude about them. Rather than exalt in their court success and become careless, they should redouble their efforts to find an alternative to field burning and conscientiously observe state rules during the burn season. The farmers may be winning in the courts, but they are losing the battle for public opinion.

Kentucky bluegrass farmers contend that burning their fields is profitable because it brings on another crop without reseeding, while ridding their land of residue, pests and fungus.

Earlier this year, they benefited from the passage of a bill that allows them to burn until an “economically viable alternative” is found. That isn’t likely to happen soon because lawmakers defined the term to mean that an alternative would have to produce the same or better economic benefit in both the short and long term. On the judicial front, clean-air activists tried in vain to persuade a district court, an appellate court and the U.S. Supreme Court that grass-seed straw burned by the farmers is solid waste subject to federal regulation.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused even to hear their appeal of a lower court decision.

For the past decade, many have said that the days of the grass growers on the Rathdrum Prairie are numbered – that the green fields would give way to subdivisions prompted by North Idaho’s incredible growth. Some have said that with mixed emotions. After all, the benefits of the open prairie can’t be underestimated. The grass fields provide an enormous filter for the Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, a cooling system for the region, a relief from expanding suburbia, and a regional economic benefit estimated at $125 million annually.

The court rulings have breathed life into the farmers’ desperate effort to hang onto their old ways. Time will tell whether someone will lose his or her life as a result.