07/11/2008

Associated Press

The issue of grass burning may reignite soon in Oregon.

Farmers, many of them concentrated in the flat lands north of Eugene-Springfield, ordinarily burn about 50,000 acres of seed fields after the harvest each year. The flames are a means of guarding the purity of the lawn seed they produce, of ridding their land of mice and of disposing of tons of straw stubble.

Now, under the orders of Gov. Ted Kulongoski, the state Department of Environmental Quality is drafting a bill for the 2009 Legislature that calls for annual reductions in the controversial practice of field burning and then a near-phase out in four or five years. It essentially continues the earlier phase-down that was stopped in 1998, said Andy Ginsburg, who oversees the states air quality division.

"If and when a bill comes forward, we will either work against it or try to make it reasonable," said Roger Beyer, a former state senator who resigned his seat in January to champion the farmers' cause as head of the Oregon Seed Council lobbying group.

So what's reasonable to his group? No action, he said.

The practice of grass seed burning has long been the bane of a number of Eugene-Springfield residents. The Eugene City Council and the Lane County Board of Commissioners have rallied against the practice in court and at the Legislature periodically over the past 30 years.

Winds tend to blow smoke particulate from any kind of fire in the Willamette Valley to the area.

Rep. Paul Holvey, a Eugene Democrat, led a push in the 2007 Legislature to ban field burning immediately, but his bill stalled in an agriculture committee.

Holvey proffers stacks of medical studies that link exposure to the particulate in smoke with reduced lung function, heart attacks and in rare cases — death.

"My position hasn't changed on this issue," Holvey said. "It's just too much. (Seed farmers) produce 40 percent of the (valleys) fine particulate during the field burning season and most of it ends up in Lane County. It's not acceptable to my constituents and it's not acceptable to me."

The controversy got an early start this year after the Eugene City Council reached an agreement with grass seed farmers not to burn fields during the recent 10-day U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials.

That provided an opening for the Eugene-based Western Environmental Law Center, which is campaigning to stop field burning. Their position is: If field burning isn't a health problem, why stop on account of the elite athletes who gathered at Hayward Field to compete?

The law center has asked Kulongoski to make the moratorium on burning permanent.

The seed council denies a connection between smoke and illness. An official has said the farmers agreed not to burn as a courtesy during the athletic event.

The moratorium was lifted Tuesday evening, but since then the weather hasn't allowed farmers to burn, said John Byers, who manages the state Agriculture Department's smoke management program.

One thing the Oregon Seed Council and the Western Environmental Law Center agree on is that Kulongoski — through the Environmental Quality Commission — has the authority to order an immediate end to field burning.

Oregon law allows the commission, which is appointed by the governor, to stop the burning if the practice is found to endanger health or if commissioners determine there are viable alternatives to burning the straw.

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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com