wheat-stubble burning story

["Mark Piepkorn (f.k.a. M J Epko [R.I.P.])" <duckchow@mail2.greenbuilder.com>]

	This is a local story (not local to me), but it spells out some of the
problems of straw-burning, in case anybody's not familiar with the topic.
It's kinda creepy.


At 01:24 AM 1/30/99 -0700, Darren Port wrote:
>check out this very interesting story.
>
>http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=012899&ID=s522171


January 28, 1999 

Stubble-burning deal is dirty, groups contend

Karen Dorn Steele - The Spokesman-Review

Spokane _ An industry-backed pact on wheat-stubble burning is a big step
backward and threatens air quality in Eastern Washington, six public health
and environmental groups said Wednesday.

The groups, including the American Lung Association of Washington, called
on Gov. Gary Locke to block the proposed agreement between the state
Ecology and Agriculture departments and the Washington Association of Wheat
Growers.

Reached earlier this month, the voluntary proposal to cut smoke in half
over seven years will leave Spokane's skies permanently smoky because wheat
 burning has increased dramatically since 1995, the groups said at a
Wednesday press conference at City Hall.

The proposed plan "neutralizes" the clean-air gains of cutting bluegrass
field burning from 60,000 acres in 1996 to a few thousand acres last year,
said Tim Connor of the Northwest Environmental Education Foundation.

"This will turn back the clock to the day when an economically powerful but
small group of farmers gets to decide how the Clean Air Act is
implemented," Connor said.

A voluntary agreement simply is signed between the parties and doesn't go
to public hearing. That cuts out Spokane's medical community and people
with breathing problems, the critics said.

Locke should insist on mandatory burning restrictions with acreage caps
that protect public health, as the Clean Air Act allows, they said.

That tougher approach was used during the administration of former Gov.
Mike Lowry to curtail bluegrass field burning.

The clean air groups want a 20,000-acre burning cap on wheat stubble to be
effective later this year -- far less than the 228,928 acres burned in
1998. The wheat growers have proposed no acreage cap, but have pledged to
cut emissions in half over seven years.

Patricia Hoffman of Save Our Summers, a Spokane Valley veterinarian who
represents public health on the state's Agricultural Burning Task Force,
announced Wednesday she's quitting the task force in protest over the wheat
deal.

There's only one seat for a public health representative on the 10-member
task force, which is dominated by seven industry representatives, Hoffman
said.

"My continued presence only serves to legitimize what has become an
illegitimate process," she said.

While the task force met over the past six months to discuss the issue,
Ecology's top brass was negotiating behind the scenes exclusively with
growers for a voluntary agreement that violates the state Clean Air Act,
she said.

Ecology considered the SOS proposal for a 20,000-acre cap and met with
clean air groups in early December, but decided to go with the wheat
growers' plan to reduce emissions, she said.

That doesn't mean public health will be compromised, said Mary Burg,
Ecology's top air quality official in Olympia. "A 50 percent reduction is
an immediate, tangible result for public health," she said.

If the voluntary approach doesn't work, Ecology can always use the hammer
of mandatory rule-making later, she said.

The Spokane groups made pointed comparisons between Ecology Director Tom
Fitzsimmons' willingness to cut a voluntary deal with wheat growers and the
action of his predecessor, Mary Riveland.

In 1996, Riveland invoked an emergency rule to phase out most bluegrass
field burning over three years.

Ecology's rule went to public hearings and withstood several court challenges.

Meanwhile, wheat-stubble burning escalated from 125,591 acres in 1996 to an
estimated 228,928 acres last year.

If Ecology decides to base the 50 percent cutback on what was burned in
1998 that would still leave 114,000 acres to be torched after seven years,
the critics say.

When it proposed the bluegrass rule, Ecology hired a team of Washington
State University economists to weigh the costs and benefits, as the
Legislature requires.

The WSU study concluded the cutback would cost growers $5.6 million a year.
But it said that impact was outweighed by $8.4 million in public health
benefits, including avoided medical costs.

The WSU report set a public health cost of $210 an acre on field burning. 

If that figure is applied to last year's wheat-stubble burning, "that's a
$48 million public health subsidy to the wheat industry this year," Hoffman
said.

Ecology hasn't attempted to apply the bluegrass cost-benefit figures to the
wheat stubble issue, Burg said.

Cindy Thompson, director of the American Lung Association's Spokane branch,
read a message from Dr. Michael McCarthy, a Spokane pediatric lung
specialist and Lung Association board member who supported the bluegrass
cutback.

"The burning of grass fields, which for decades endangered the lung health
of many in Spokane and elsewhere, pales in comparison" to the escalating
danger of wheat-stubble burning, McCarthy said.

"We urge wheat growers to end this practice and to cease placing their
convenience ahead of their neighbors' lives and health," McCarthy said.

Memo: Other groups participating in Wednesday's press conference included
the Washington Environmental Council, Citizens for Clean Air and the Sierra
Club.