03/08/1978 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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II. Update Report on Field Burning Memo from City Attorney dated March 1, 1978, distributed. Assistant Manager said it had been unfortunate that the field-burning issue had been characterized as the City of Eugene versus the seed growers. He felt this 4IIt was doing a disservice to the issue, the issue being the finite capacity of the airshed of the Willamette Valley. If field burning continues to exceed particulate limits, then other industry and commerce must reduce their emissions all through the valley. He noted the airshed is a finite resource and the failure of many to see the issue in this broad term is a maj or concern of the City of Eugene. He felt it important to have ci t i zen committee involvement such as the Air Maintenance Quality Committee, and hoped to see the entire valley get involved in dealing with the problem of air pollution in the valley. He also noted that the City is prepared to meet with and to work with others involved in the problem to solve the matter constructively. He also expressed a concern of the City regarding adequate monitoring and data produced from this summer's field burning, as that data will be necessary to determine the level of pollutants in field burning in the future. Stan Long reviewed the background in which the City of Eugene got involved with the State and Federal EPA regarding the State Legislature's intent to increase field burning from 50,000 acres to 180,000 acres in 1978. The EPA had ruled against the State's raising of the number of acres to be burned and gave the state two alternatives: 1) To agree to a one-year interim control strategy; 2) to redo the request for amendments and show offsets of an amount sufficient to make up the difference. He said if the state followed the second procedure, that amount of offset would have an enormous impact on other industries in the state. Because of time constraints, the state was not able to prepare a formal revision with offsets. Thus, the course of action seemed to be a compromise on the amount of field burning allowed. The obstacle to the compromise was a question of who had discretion to authorize an amount of field burning less than 180,000 acres. The City's position is that such discretion exists. To clarify the question, DEQ requested the Attorney General's opinion. The Attorney General initially agreed the EQC had the authority. The EQC held a hearing in Salem on February 24. Subsequently, after further consideration on the position of the growers, the Attorney General revised his opinion to provide that the EQC has no authority to set up an amount lower than 180,000 acres. It was the Attorney General's view that EQC is required to submit a full-scale SIP revision to the EPA proposing to burn 180,000 acres and take the amount of additional pollution thereby created out of the amounts available to other Oregon industries. Such a view of legislative intent has several problems. The State Legislature did not accept the position taken by Eugene during the last session that Federal law set certain limitations. A second problem involves the Attorney General's interpretation and the Stat~ present course of action 3/8/78--2 1'+8 - -