Controlled burn sparks complaints about air quality

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Because smoke is in the air, discontent was in the wind.

By Wednesday morning, the day after Forest Service fire management experts began igniting 4,500 forested acres at the west end of Bethel Ridge, the phones were lighting up with complaints to the Naches Ranger Station, air-quality experts and local media.

"We've been getting a number of very, very hostile phone calls at the ranger station about our project yesterday and about the air quality in Yakima, and how we've, quote-unquote, destroyed that," said Jim Bailey, the Naches Ranger District's fire fuels specialist.

"Yes, you can smell smoke," Bailey added. "We recognize that, and you can see the smoke overhead. But the facts certainly aren't backing up anybody's contention that we've destroyed it."

One disgruntled resident was Randy Ward, who said the smoky air was making it all but impossible for him to continue work on an outside project at his home in the Cowiche basin.

"It's damned awful there. I can't see across the valley," Ward said, noting that the size of the controlled burn was much larger than typical prescribed burns.

"All I'm suggesting is they burn smaller areas at a time so the air doesn't get so obnoxiously filthy. Why does it have to happen all at once?"

The Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency has been a very interested observer, and during the worst stretch -- between 7 and 8 a.m. Wednesday -- the air-quality numbers weren't promising. The one-hour averages were 22 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air in Yakima and 34 in Toppenish.

If those numbers had held steady over 24 hours, the agency would be concerned enough to consider calling for a burn ban and asking the Forest Service to cease its operations, director Gary Pruitt said.

But with each hour, the particulate-mass numbers kept dropping.

By 9 a.m., the averages dropped to 13.5 and 30.5 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air in Yakima and Toppenish, and two hours later the numbers were 9.7 in Yakima and 17.5 in Toppenish.

Even if those numbers had been 24-hour averages,  the first would be well within  the cleanest category ("good") for air quality and the latter set of numbers would fall into the next category of "moderate," where the only impact is that "unusually sensitive people" should consider limiting heavy exertion or outdoor activity.

By early afternoon, both counts of fine particulate matter were easily within the "good" range.

The fact there was minimal wind Wednesday created a spike in the early-morning numbers, Pruitt said.

"If we'd have had a typical summer breeze going on this morning, we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing," he said. "It was little more than a long nighttime inversion, and absent any wind to help move it out, the (smoke) buildup was fairly rapid."

Bailey said the Forest Service had ignited about 4,000 acres of what will ultimately be a 6,100-acre prescribed-burn project, and delayed igniting another 1,000-acre patch early today until the air-quality numbers improved.

"I believe we're making very good decisions on the ground. We are consulting with air-quality specialists," Bailey said. "For people thinking we're making these decisions indiscriminately is not true. Human health is our first concern."