County takes field-burning case to state.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran June 26, 2007): The state Department of Agriculture received 1,182 complaints about field burning in 2006. Also, 1,400 farmers in the Willamette Valley raise grass seed. Incorrect figures were reported in an article on Page D4 on Saturday.

PORTLAND - Lane County commissioners are second-guessing the Legislature when they ask the state to ban field burning on health grounds, representatives of the grass seed industry argued Friday.

But lawyers who helped present Lane County's petition to the state Environmental Quality Commission said the environmental panel has the legal authority to impose a ban if medical evidence shows that the smoke that rises each summer is a public health danger - and it was the Legislature that gave that power to the commission.

"The Legislature told the commission to look at (health issues) and exercise independent judgment," said Dan Galpern, attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center. The Eugene-based, nonprofit environmental law firm is assisting the county commissioners.

The state environmental panel will first get an opinion from its attorney about its authority and responsibilities, and whether and how it can act quickly on the county's request for an emergency ruling to stop this summer's burn, Chairwoman Lynn Hampton said. Grass seed farmers start burning in July.

If the county request is "filed in proper form, I assume it's something we'll have to consider," Hampton said after the meeting.

The panel is a citizen body appointed by the governor to establish policy and rules for the state Department of Environmental Quality. The commission can fine polluters and hear appeals. The members are a tribal prosecutor from Pendleton, an environmental consultant from Portland, a child development expert from Salem, a former legislator from Ashland and a civil engineering professor from Corvallis.

About 150 grass seed farmers burn about 50,000 acres of grass seed straw in the Willamette Valley after harvest each year.

Many of those fields are in the flatlands north of Eugene, and the prevailing winds in the summer blow to the south. The winds deliver a "severe short-term load" of harmful particulate to communities, Galpern said.

Field burning is contentious and has sparked dozens of lawsuits in the Pacific Northwest over the past 30 years. Grass seed farmers in Idaho and Washington are legally barred from burning.

Emissaries from the city of Eugene and Lane County appearing before the environmental panel in Portland on Friday said the medical evidence on the danger of breathing particulate in smoke is overwhelming - especially when it comes to people with asthma, chronic bronchitis, cystic fibrosis, emphysema and cardiovascular disease.

Grass Seed Council Executive Secretary Dave Nelson launched an oblique attack against the county's health claims.

Instead of addressing the short-term exposure risk, he cited 24-hour air quality measures to show that field burning does not make the air generally dirtier than federal law allows.

He also cited data to show more asthma hospitalization in the winter in Oregon, when particulate pollution in the air from home woodstove heating is heavy.

`(Field burners) pale in comparison to the emissions of woodstoves and fireplaces in Lane County," Nelson told the state commission.

Those testifying for the ban invoked the memory of Steve Prefontaine, an Olympic-caliber runner who burned up the track on behalf of the University of Oregon in the 1970s.

Famed coach from that era Bill Bowerman took "Pre" and three other Olympians to the Legislature in February 1975 to urge lawmakers to keep a ban on field burning it had enacted in 1971.

The year before, Prefontaine was set to run a mile time trial in front of a packed crowd at Hayward Field, Galpern told the commission. A wall of field smoke rolled in so thick that the runners couldn't see the length of the field.

Pre ran anyway, and he finished in 3 minutes and 58 seconds - coughing up blood and tearing muscle fibers under his rib cage in the process, Galpern said.

"That was the effect on an elite athlete. Scores of them train year-round in the Willamette Valley," he said.

Several witnesses on Friday said field burning was a worry with thousands of elite runners coming to Eugene next year for the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials. After the meeting, Nelson noted the Trials would end by July 6, and the earliest farmers burn their fields is July 10.

Galpern said athletes already are training for the Trials this summer in Eugene and will train through next year's Trials and after.

"It's damaging to Eugene's reputation as the center of track and field in the United States, that for a substantial chunk of the year the area could be inundated from field-burning smoke."

The grass seed farmers chided Eugene residents for their fussiness about field-burning smoke as well as pollen. Nelson said a Eugene woman recently sent him a bill for her asthma medication because her lungs had been so irritated this spring by pollen.

"Whether or not we grow grass seed in the Willamette Valley, pollen is going to be there," Nelson said. "Every vegetation - whether it's fir trees or rhododendrons - produces pollen."

Few people object to field burning, he said, noting that the state received 11,082 complaints about the practice in 2006. That's a small fraction of the Willamette Valley's population, he said. The great majority of the valley's population is in the Portland metro area, which is upwind from most of the burning and thus unaffected by the smoke.

Nelson brought along Marie Bowers, the daughter of a Linn and Lane County field burner who is studying agriculture at Washington State University.

Bowers told commissioners that she's a fifth-generation grass seed grower and she can see no alternative to burning.

Crop rotation to stop weed seed carry-over would not work because nothing else "performs" as well as grass seed in the wet soils in the valley, Bowers said.

Just leaving straw on the ground would smother and act as poison to the next year's crop, she said.

"If burning is banned, it would force us to plow the ground under, causing more problems than the dear city of Eugene has intended," she said.

"Working the soil every year would require us to run our tractors 24/7 over each field about five times. This would create massive amounts of dust and fossil fuels released in the air.

"The dust particulate would not be carried away in the air and disappear like the smoke does. It will infiltrate Eugene and into the surrounding areas more frequently and more often than the smoke does," she said.

But most grass seed farmers don't burn. Only about 150 of the valley's 1,250 farmers burn each year. Others dispose of their straw by, for example, raking it up and selling it. The industry sells 70,000 tons a year of waste straw to Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

After the meeting, Galpern said the industry witnesses were trying to confuse the issue and label worries about field burning as a parochial concern of just a few Eugene residents.

Most farmers have found other ways to clean their fields, he said. "The grass seed industry, as was shown in Washington, will do quite well, thank you, to continue without burning." The 11,082 complaints is a huge number, and it's the highest volume logged in a half-dozen years, Galpern said.

"All the evidence shows the patience of people has been exhausted and they want to breathe the air free of concerns of smoke."