Air Quality Board To Let Smoke Settle

Ignoring public outcry, the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority on Thursday put off grass-burning reform for another three months.

Led by Spokane County Commissioners Steve Hasson and Phil Harris, the authority’s five-member board of directors dismissed the results of a July public workshop and written testimony from hundreds of citizens who oppose grass burning.

The board, which earlier had ordered SCAPCA staff to rush together the workshop, postponed discussion of the issue until Nov. 2, well after this year’s grass-burning season. Spokane Councilman Mike Brewer and Fairfield Mayor Harry Gibbons agreed with the commissioners while SCAPCA chairwoman Jan Monaco, director of the Spokane County Medical Society, was absent.

The move means a final decision on whether to restrict grass field burning won’t be made until early 1996, according to SCAPCA director Eric Skelton.

Bluegrass farmers this year may begin burning their fields Aug. 15 and continue through Sept. 28, weather permitting. They have promised not to light fields Friday through Sunday, or Labor Day, though no regulations are in place to legally restrict burning on those days.

Last year, 105 Spokane County farmers burned 27,130 acres, Skelton said.

Growers annually torch their fields after harvest to clear chaff and boost yields for the coming year. They say fire is the surest method to keep the bluegrass industry in business.

Field-burning opponents, however, say the practice clogs the skies with unhealthy smoke and particles, forcing respiratory sufferers indoors.

Unveiling results of public testimony on grass burning, Skelton told the board that 94 percent of the 369 people who spoke or wrote to the agency were against grass burning. Of those opposed, 250 asked that grass burning be phased out or banned immediately. Public health was the most common reason cited for opposition.

But Harris, who recently joined the board, scoffed at the findings, saying they were unscientific. He said he likes to come to a decision by “walking around and talking to people.”

“People haven’t been given the opportunity to express themselves,” he said. “We’re getting dangerously close to making a decision based on emotion, not on fact.”

Harris suggested a scientific public poll, but Hasson torpedoed that idea.

“I’m against polls because that defers leadership,” Hasson said. “Four or five reasonable people ought to be able to conclude an action one way or another.”

Patricia Hoffman, founder of Save Our Summers, an anti-grass burning group, accused the board of tabling the debate until after the smoke - and opposition - disappears.

“Obviously, they want us to go away,” she said. “They want to talk about it in the middle of winter when no one is thinking about grass burning.”

But John Cornwall, president of the Intermountain Grass Growers Association, said SOS was frightening people with no scientific evidence of a public health problem.

“They’ve got the breathing impaired scared to death that as soon as they take a gulp of grass smoke, they’re going to die,” he said.

, DataTimes