Oregon Public Broadcasting

The roasted smell of burning grass fields has been part of Northwest farming culture for generations and so has the eye-stinging haze.

Field burning has come under heavy scrutiny lately, especially in Salem. State lawmakers there are considering an outright ban on the practice.

That’s not likely any time soon in neighboring Idaho. But critics there have negotiated limits on field burning.

We have reports from two of our correspondents: Doug Nadvornick has the story from Idaho. But we start with Chris Lehman in Salem.

Nick Bowers lives in Linn County, Oregon, which markets itself as the Grass Seed Capital of the World.  So he’s on the front lines of the battle over field burning.  One local farmer burns his fields close to Bowers’ house.  How close?

Nick Bowers stands in his grass-seed field near Harrisburg, Oregon.

Nick Bowers:  “To the edge of my yard.”

Actually, Bowers is that farmer.  He burns just under half of his 1200 acres of grass-seed fields each year.  That happens in late summer and early fall.  Right now, his house is virtually surrounded by knee-high blades of grass.

Nick Bowers:  “Watch your step, there’s a hole right here.”

This is annual rye-grass, and Bowers sells the seeds he’ll harvest to farmers so they can plant cover crops to prevent soil erosion over the winter.  The grass also ends up as hay for livestock.

Grass-seed farmers burn their fields after harvest to get rids of weeds and pests.  Bowers is a fourth-generation grass-seed farmer, but he says field burning today isn’t much like the field burning of his father’s and grandfather’s day.

Nick Bowers:  “We don’t burn everyday that we want to.  We only burn when we are allowed to by the Oregon Department of Agriculture. They tell us when we can burn, specific areas we can burn, and when the fire has to be done.”

In fact, the Department of Agriculture only let farmers burn their fields on 12 days last year.  But opponents of field burning say it just takes one blaze to cause serious health problems. 

Doug Nadvornick picks up the story from Sandpoint, Idaho.

Thirteen years ago, Paul Vogel’s wife Sharon suffocated on a summer night. He remembers that grass farmers were burning about 50 miles away that afternoon. The prevailing winds blew the smoke their way.

Sharon and their kids were outside that day  and they were camping in the backyard that night. It was too much. Paul Vogel says his wife suffered a fatal asthma attack.

Paul Vogel: “Sharon’s primary care physicians, her allergist and several cardiologists and pulmonologists were all of the opinion that the smoke caused the asthma attack.”

Sharon Vogel’s death and that of two others attributed to field burning in later years motivated Paul Vogel to wage a long campaign to stop it. Others joined the effort. The results have been mixed.

In 2007 a federal appeals court ruled Idaho’s field burning regulations were illegal.

Patti Gora-McRavin with Safe Air for Everyone says her group then negotiated with growers and the state to hash out a compromise. The new rules allow burning, but with tougher conditions.

Patti Gora-McRavin: “They cannot create a road hazard for people traveling on the highway. They cannot hit the sensitive receptors of hospitals, schools in sessions or homes that house people with disabilities or elders.”

Gora-McRavin sees Idaho’s new field burning rules as a vast improvement. She believes they’ll prevent people like Sharon Vogel from suffocating when farmers torch their fields in the summer.

But, across the border in eastern Washington, grass field burning was banned years ago. Paul Vogel says opponents have had no luck convincing lawmakers in Boise to do the same in Idaho.

Paul Vogel: “The legislature is populated by farmers and they defend their right to conduct any type of agricultural operation they want.”

Grass seed farmers and their critics have fought for decades over field burning in Oregon too. After years of limitations, Oregon is considering an outright ban. Chris Lehman picks up the story from here.       

Oregon has seen its tragedies associated with field burning too.  Smoke from one blaze in 1988 led to a pile-up along I-5 that killed seven people.  That led to tougher regulations, but so far the grass seed industry has successfully preserved field burning.

Eugene Democratic Representative Paul Holvey says he’s hoping a new bill will finally put out the fires this year.

Rep. Paul Holvey.  “I’m hoping it does.  It looks like it’s going to be real close.  I think it’s a real good practical way to look at this.”

Holvey is referring to a compromise amendment that allows for a four-year phaseout, instead of an immediate ban that some lawmakers had pushed.

The bill also allows for up to 3000 acres of so-called “emergency burning” in cases of severe outbreaks of pests.

If the measure passes, it would mean that grass-seed farmers like Nick Bowers will have to find new ways to operate.  Bowers says he’d survive, but at a cost.

Nick Bowers:  “In the end we’d have more wind and water erosion, because I am going to till the soil more, and we will, I will use more pesticides.”

That’s a trade-off that opponents of field burning say they’re willing to make.

Online:

Information about field burning in Oregon