| Apropos your story on the Burn Ban Campaign, Vol.15 No. 3, I submit the following: For two days, in mid-January, the local tree farm burned its post-Christmas slashings. The smoke was thick and heavy, hanging low in our woods, to the west.
Since I had stopped my weekly junk mail burning because of the advertised burn ban, I drove over to the local fire station to find out if the ban had been lifted. The fireman said, no, the ban was in effect as of Jan. 1.
I asked the obvious question.
He said, well, they probably had an Agricultural Burn Permit. He said those permits were hard to get: State Ecology folks, County and City Fire Department all involved. He said that building contractors couldn’t even get those permits; they had to haul their land-clearing debris to the dump.
That was a surprise!
If everyone is so concerned about air pollution why should there be such an exception as an Agricultural Permit? Why shouldn’t they haul their debris to the dump like everyone else?
I used to burn my grocery-bag of junk mail once a week because I didn’t like to send stuff with my name and address on it to the dump. The tree farm generated more smoke in two days than I could generate in ten years.
The fireman said there were two other exceptions to the ban: a bonafide campfire, consisting of split firewood, not slash or trash (and, I assume, started with no more than two kitchen matches).
The other exception, he said, was “ritual fires.”
I asked if I played bongos while I burned my junk mail, would that qualify?
His response was not encouraging.
John C. Pennell
Bainbridge Island. | 