Burning of Waste by Farmers Raises Concerns

The San Joaquin Valley, one foot stuck in suburbia and the other foot still firmly planted in its agricultural past, is a place full of odd little clashes.

There are the Hmong aborigines from the highlands of Laos growing big, fat strawberries at the town’s edge, their tiny farms about to be gobbled up by suburban sprawl. There are busy streets full of commerce suddenly stopped dead by an irrigation canal shunting water to distant farms.

And then there is the TV weatherman bemoaning another forecast of smutty, putrid air only to announce that tomorrow--for the third straight day--is another “permissive burn day” for farmers.

In this long, flat valley that stretches from Bakersfield to Stockton--the second-worst air quality basin in the nation, after Los Angeles--farmers are still allowed to torch branches, ignite raisin trays and burn entire fields of uprooted peach trees, grapevines and grain stubble.

Years after rice growers in the Sacramento Valley were forced to change their controversial burning practices because of air quality degradation, farmers in the San Joaquin Valley continue their time-honored practice.

There are few calls, not even from the local Sierra Club, to stop the burnings, even though entire recycling plants were built over the last 15 years to handle such waste. “It’s not an issue that really comes up, though it probably should,” said George Whitmore, president of the Fresno chapter of the Sierra Club.

But air quality control regulars say that there are problems with the current practice, and they have met with farmers and others to find a better way.

To what degree farming practices contribute to the valley’s worsening air pollution is not exactly known. A $27-million joint study by federal and state environmental regulators is trying to quantify the health risks posed by dust and other particulates from farming operations.

Air quality experts agree that the burning of farm waste can be a significant source of pollution, especially during the fall and winter when the air is stagnant or foggy and classrooms are sometimes one-quarter empty because of children at home with asthma or other lung ailments. Nearly 750,000 acres of farmland and rangeland were burned last year in the eight counties that make up the San Joaquin Valley, according to official reports. More than 1 million tons of farm waste was set on fire, adding nearly 5,000 tons of suspended particulates to the air basin.

The San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District declared 101 days off-limits to burning in 1998. But farmers here and there routinely defy “no burn” days, willing to risk a sometimes stiff fine in order to clear a field for planting.

With only half a dozen full-time inspectors monitoring field burning in a valley that encompasses 25,000 square miles, farmers say there are better than even odds that they will get away with it. “It’s like breaking a speed law,” said farmer Walt Hogan. “If you need to clear your field in a hurry to plant new trees or crop, some farmers figure they’re better off risking a fine than letting that field sit idle for a whole year.”

Hogan, a Caruthers raisin grower who operates a land clearing business, was fined $1,500 last year by the air pollution control district for burning on a “no burn” day.

“This is how backward the law is,” he said. “A lot of times I start the fire on a burn day, but I have to stop because the next day is a ‘no burn’ day. So the fire just sits there and smolders for two or three days until it’s a burn day again. This smoldering creates a heck of a lot more pollution than if I had been allowed to let it burn clean and straight through.”

Farmers say that time and money considerations force them to torch their pruned waste and uprooted orchards rather than opt for wood chipping or recycling at a biomass plant. Clearing an old orchard by bulldozer and fire can take half the time and cost half as much as recycling.

Air pollution control regulators say that big and small growers alike break the law. They concede that the fines, mostly ranging from $500 to $2,000, do not act as a huge deterrent. The largest fine, $7,000, was issued a few years ago against E.J. Gallo Winery of Modesto for burning plastic bags of green grass and other landscaping waste and trying to pass it off as walnut tree limbs, regulators say.

Gallo’s Fresno operation, paradoxically, is listed as one of the firms that recycle green waste for farmers.

“For a lot of farmers, it’s a matter of tradition,” said Mike Escotto, a supervisor for the air pollution control district. “They feel it’s their right to burn and they can be resistant to change.”

Some environmentalists criticize the air pollution control district as a toothless agency unwilling to come down hard on farmers. They also criticize local governments that approve large residential projects on the fringe of town, thereby increasing car travel.

At the same time, environmentalists point out, nearly all of the biomass plants in the valley have closed because the big power companies, in the climate of deregulation, are no longer buying energy produced by burning recycled waste.

Environmentalists are encouraging the air pollution district to spend some of its millions in grant money to bring the biomass plants back on line and subsidize agricultural recycling.

Air pollution regulators say they don’t know if it is economically feasible for a single district to attempt to salvage the cogeneration industry without the help of the state government. They say former Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed two bills that would have provided tax credits to farmers and biomass plants for recycling farm waste.

The pollution control district does not foresee banning the practice of agricultural burning, but regulators have proposed a plan that they believe will better protect the public and prove more fair to farmers. The plan would open up every day of the year to agricultural burning except smog alert days. But burning would be allowed on only a limited number of acres in each county each day.

“Putting it in place is going to be a big challenge,” said Bob Kard, the air district’s director of compliance. “It would require a lot more accounting, computer monitoring and weather forecasting. But with this valley only getting more crowded, we’re going to have to do something.”