Permanent burn ban discussed

By Chris Fitzgerald, KP News

 

Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is proposing a rule change to current regulations that would ban all land-clearing burning and, later, any residential burning of yard waste. The rule, which will affect Pierce, King and Snohomish counties, would be in effect on July 1, 2008, for land-clearing and July 1, 2010, for residential yard waste.

According to Dic Gribbon, an inspector for the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA), state law requires banning of land-clearing and residential burning in “any area where reasonable alternatives to burning are available — alternatives like curb-side pick up, grinding, chipping and composting.”

Gribbon directed his staff to send a broadcast email to Pierce County Fire Chief Association members in January. It reads, in part, “In recent months, Clean Air Agency staff met with solid waste officials and fire marshals in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties to research the availability of alternatives. Based on this research, we have determined that alternatives are reasonably available throughout these three counties. There is also widespread support for this burn boundary expansion within the health and fire service communities.” The ban would not affect agricultural, forestry management, recreational, or fire-training burning, nor burning for emergency cleanup of storm or flood debris.

On Jan. 15, newly elected Fire District 16 Chairman James Bosch sent a letter to the PSCAA challenging Gribbons’ claim of support. “Recently the Board of Fire Commissioners of the (KPFD) have chosen to not support your agency’s proposed rule change,” he wrote. Bosch cited three primary obstacles: loss of revenue (income of approximately $12,000 annually for land-clearing burn permits/monitoring), increased service demand, and adverse public relations. Bosch stated that FD-16 would be forced to make a policy change if a permanent ban becomes regulation. (Firefighters currently respond to burn complaints, document the action and send an invoice for reimbursement of callout expense to the PSCAA, which Bosch states will change with a ban.) Bosch writes, “…All nuisance smoke complaints for land clearing burning (would be) forwarded to your office for investigation and enforcement.”

In an interview with the KP News, FD-16 Operations Division Chief Guy Allen voiced the same objections. Referring to firefighters and equipment now being used to “essentially do the work of the PSCAA for them,” he said burn-related complaints currently account for some 200 events annually. If a ban became regulation, he fears firefighters would be caught in the middle, playing policemen to enforce agency regulations on an even greater scale.

Allen anticipates the regulation will pass, however. He said it first was proposed in January 2000, later resurfacing as a proposal at least two other times in the last seven years. Asked what landowners can do if they have land in need of clearing, he said, “Act now. Get it done before July 1. There is no grandfather clause, no grace period, or allowance for recently logged land that has yet to be cleared.”

 

Puget Sound Clean Air Agency

The PSCAA is a special-purpose regional agency created in 1967; its sole jurisdiction lies in King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. The agency is governed by a board of directors and an advisory council, which includes representatives from all four counties, Tacoma-Pierce county health and solid waste departments, and Pierce County Planning and Land Services. The member-at-large for the Key Peninsula is Marina Cofer-Wildsmith, who resides on Bainbridge Island and is the former executive director for the Washington chapter of the American Lung Association. PSCAA works in partnership with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Ecology. Its mission reads, “We work together to clean the air we breathe and protect our climate through education, incentives and enforcement.”

The agency is mandated to monitor air pollution by federal and state Clean Air Acts in these four counties that comprise, according to its data, 6,300 square miles, and over half the state’s population. The proposed burn ban does not extend to Kitsap County.

 

Open house held

On Jan. 8, the PSCAA held one of five regionwide open houses at the Key Peninsula Lutheran Church, where representatives from Pierce County health and solid waste agencies were also present. Alice Collingwood, communications manager for PSCAA, explained in an interview that representatives from the four counties do an assessment of their jurisdictions every three years. Last summer they “floated the idea” of a permanent burn ban and concluded there were “generally enough” alternative resources available in the counties to preclude burning. Of the four jurisdictions, only Kitsap County was found to fall below the population density calling for burning regulations. That the peninsulas of Pierce County were sparsely populated and rurally-zoned was not considered when applying the county standard. Collingwood said if the board approves the ban, “We will spend the next two years developing more options (for individuals to recycle creatively).” She said the DOE was drafting a report illustrating how other communities had initiated workable alternatives to outdoor burning, and hoped it would soon be available.

Both Bosch and Allen express concerns for citizen response at the polls if the regulation is enacted — increased 911 nuisance calls leave less time for an already-stretched fire district to respond to true emergency events, eat into a tight budget, nibble away at programs already pared down. Bosch wrote in his letter, “What is clear is that the relationship between (KP) citizens and the Fire Department could be damaged when the Fire Department participates in enforcement actions.” Bosch’s final statements seem to sum up comments heard at the January open house: “It is difficult to validate this position of banning outdoor burning within the rural setting of the KP while our rural neighbors, Kitsap and Mason counties, do not have similar bans in place.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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