EPA rule could cut grass field burning in Oregon

EUGENE – Oregon grass-seed farmers may soon need to curtail the field burning they do to keep their stock healthy as a result of tougher national smoke-control standards.

“It’s going to make burning of any kind – open burning, field burning, forest burning – just that much trickier,” said David Collier, an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality manager.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is adopting the new smoke-control rules based on ever-stronger evidence that smoke in the air leads to greater rates of illness and death from heart and lung diseases, said Steve Body, the agency’s expert on agricultural burning in the Northwest.

But a clampdown would threaten some of the 1,500 Oregon farmers who make the Willamette Valley the world’s primary source for lawn, golf course and pasture grass.

Oregon farmers have been capped at 40,000 acres of burning annually – compared with a total of 529,000 acres in production statewide.

The EPA doesn’t regulate field burning directly. It set standards for the average amount of particulate that can hang in the air in a given 24-hour period.

The rules, to be finalized this September, will dramatically cut the allowable amount of fine particulate, which is essentially smoke.