Lind Research Station receives funding to explore burning alternatives

Two Washington State University research farms and a consultant are expected to receive grant money to explore ways to reduce agricultural burning and the resulting smoke.

The money for the research into alternatives to agricultural burning comes from burn permit fees farmers pay as a part of receiving a burn permit.

The Washington State Clean Air Act established the Agricultural Burning Practices and Research Task Force to work on reducing air pollution emissions from agricultural burning. The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) chairs the task force.

Other task force members represent Eastern Washington local clean air agencies, the agricultural community, the Washington Department of Agriculture, local universities, public health, and conservation districts.

The Clean Air Act empowers the task force to develop best management practices to reduce air emissions from agricultural activities, determine the level of agricultural burning permit fees, and identify and support research.

The task force recently recommended that Ecology provide a total of $140,500 in grants for three research projects:

• $32,500 for the WSU Lind Research Station, “Management of Fresh Wheat Residue for Irrigated Winter Canola Production.” This project will attempt to identify the cause of declines in yields for winter canola planted into wheat stubble.

• $48,000 for the WSU Cook Agronomy Farm, “Straw Management and Crop Rotation Alternatives to Burning Wheat Stubble: Assessing Economic and Environmental Trade-offs.” This project will examine the nutrient cycling within different parts of an agricultural field and how various crop residue management methods, including burning, affect such cycling.

• $60,000 for Lewis Engineering Consultants, “Cereal Straw Utilization for Fibers and Chemicals.” This project will work to develop various grades of bleached and unbleached papers from straw pulp. It also will demonstrate steps for converting sugars recovered from the waste stream that results from straw-pulping operations. Lewis Engineering Consultants (LEC) has worked with Ecology for 10 years on this project and others. Mark Lewis of LEC is an expert in non-wood fiber pulping and papermaking; he developed the technology for the first continuous straw pulp mill in North America.