05/23/06 Ag burning hearings

Washington Ag May 23, 2006 Several public hearings are being held this week by the Department of Ecology to update a rule covering cereal stubble burning. The rule was developed collaboratively with an advisory group consisting of representatives from the Washington Association of Wheat Growers and other agricultural industry groups, Save Our Summers and the American Lung Association of Washington, and researchers with expertise in farming and air pollution. Gretchen Borck, Director of Issues for the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, says producers have cut the amount of acreage they burn in half in the past seven years. Borck: "That was our goal with the memorandum of understanding and we have been able to do that through education and alternative methods of farming and just better management of our land and then the smoke management program that the Department of Ecology has, but we have cut our acreage in half." All the hearings begin at 7 p.m. and there is one tonite in Moses Lake at Big Bend Community College; this Wednesday in Spokane at WSU/Cooperative Extension on Havanna and also in Wenatchee at the Wenatchee Valley Museum; this Thursday at the Walla Walla Regional Airport and then May 30th in Pullman on the WSU campus in the Carpenter building. A copy of the rule is on Ecology's website. I'm Bob Hoff.