Front Street Weekly; 806

[Music] Tonight on Front Street Weekly: Fields of Fire Grass seed farmer’s large scale burning is crucial for maintaining their crops. Critics say it's a danger to the public and they want it stopped. Reporter Jeff Schaffer looks at why this debate suddenly heated up - and why it’s unlikely to cool down again. Then, ?Marilyn Deutsch? travels to Mt. St. Helens where 8 years ago there was death and destruction, now life is returning. We’ll look at what's being done to encourage this comeback. And finally, we’ll meet a Primeville man who brings old cars back to life, from the junkyard to the showroom. Good evening and welcome to this edition Front Street Weekly. Our first story tonight is about

controversy that has caused angry debate in Oregon for more than 20 years. The issue is field burning. Up to now the controversy has usually followed a seasonal pattern with a lot of arguments during summer when burning is at its peak. And then a cooling off period during the rainy months of fall and winter. But last August something happened that focused a lot of new attention on this issue and made sure it wouldn't just fade away once the smoke clears. This was the scene August 3rd on Interstate 5 just south of Albany. A massive pileup that killed seven people and injured more than three dozen others. It was caused by smoke drifting across the highway. Smoke created by a field burn that got out of control. Ironically the farmer involved in the accident was following all the correct procedures. He was actually burning a field some distance from the highway but hot ashes blew into another field right beside the road and the smoke from that second accidental fire is what caused the crash. Several lawsuits have now been filed against the farmer and

the State Department of Environmental Quality. For a short time all field burning was stopped while regulators drew up new guidelines for burning near highways. But while the crash generated lots of headlines traffic safety isn't the main focus of this controversy. Critics of field burning say there are bigger issues involving public health and the overall quality of life in Oregon. I had patients who had come to Sweet Home as a place to retire as many people who live in the surrounding hills have chosen to do and and they they actually left. They had to leave the state because they couldn't put up with the toxicity to their lungs . William Totler practiced family medicine in Sweet Home for several years. His experiences reflect a growing concern about the possible health effects of field burning. Up to now there have been very few studies in this area. That's because it's difficult to zero in on smoke from the grass fields. The smoke may drift into a community over several days or it may blow through in a couple of hours. But no one really knows how it

may affect people over the long term. The part that causes me anxiety in this vacuum of knowledge about what the health effects are that people go ahead and assume that everything's OK when indeed if you look at all the related data with respect to particulates and chemicals that are produced one sees a clear pattern of The lung doesn't do well with these compounds even healthy lungs. People in Oregon have had to live with field burning since the 1940s. That's when farmers discovered they could sanitize the fields by igniting the straw that was left over after each harvest to get rid of diseases insects and other problems. Over the years this practice has helped make Oregon a leader in the grass seed industry. First of all we produce the highest quality grass seed of any place in the world. Jim Carnes is president of the international seed company in Haulsy southwest of Albany. His firm and others in the Williamette Valley process Oregon's grass seed and ship it out across the U.S. and around the world. It's been estimated that the gross value of the seed

industry to the state's economy is about 700 million dollars a year, and Jim Carnes thinks there are more opportunities ahead in the Pacific Rim. I feel that China, in probably 10 to 15 years will be could be the largest consumer of grass seed in the world in my opinion. This could increase Oregon's production of grass seed by at least somewhere 25 to even 35 percent. Because the burning led to such a high quality product, farmers have stuck with it and for many years it was largely unregulated. But in the late 1960s there were some severe smoke problems in the Eugene Springfield area and people around the valley demanded that the burning be stopped. Back in the early 1970s the Oregon legislature did enact a plan that would have totally phased out field burning over a period of several years. But that plan also called for the development of alternative field sanitation methods that wouldn't cause so much smoke. and what happened was none of those alternatives were ever successfully developed.

In 1979 the legislature set a limit of two hundred and fifty thousand acres that could be open field burned each year. The Department of Environmental Quality has kept farmers under that limit every year. But critics say the burning has been allowed to go on much too long. Bill Johnson of Sweet Home heads up an organization that is trying to stop the practice once and for all. "[Johnson] And it's kind of like the weather everybody talks about but nobody does anything. Well you cannot just throw money at a problem and solve it. You've got to want to do it. You have to want to do it. It's easy to pick on us. And I'm not saying that maybe we shouldn't be picked on to to get us to clean up our act, but personally I think we're we're working on it we're working on it very diligently "[Host] As a grass seed grower Dennis Glazer is worried that he and other farmers are seen as the bad guys in this debate. Glaser has been working to cut back on his own field burning for the past few years.

Right at the present time where we're about around 25 percent of open field burning and right close to 30 percent propane and the rest of it we've we've done something else with, and that's out of about 5000 acres that were were farming. More and more farmers are now using these propane burners on a limited basis. Propane burning doesn't sanitize as well as open field burning and it's slower and more expensive. But the biggest problem for farmers who cut back on open field burning is this: thousands of tons of leftover straw. It doesn't have much nutrition value, mostly it's just fiber. Dennis Glaser has contracted with a company to compress the straw and sell it to Japan for cattle feed. This helps him recoup some of the cost of bailing and storing the material. But the export market is limited and many farmers end up burning the excess straw during the winter. Critics say this is simply shifting the burning problem around and they want farmers to find some other solution.

The feeling you see they take the seed off and the rest is garbage. They've got their money they're going to run with it. Well that's one way to look at it My point is that you have a responsibility to dispose of your garbage in such a way that you're not making your neighbor sick and angry. We feel in one sense that we know the public doesn't like the smoke. We know that they're not going to like our chemicals when we have to start using two or three or four times as many chemicals to produce the same quality of seed. David Nelson is a spokesman for the seed industry and he says the grass fields of the Willamette Valley could become seriously polluted with pesticides and other chemicals if all burning is eliminated. Nelson also thinks that critics of air pollution are putting too much blame on the farmers. There's always some source of pollution that arises out of a congregation of people who are working in an industry and whether the seed industry happens to be a very small emitter compared to the bulk of the rest of the

industry. Smoke from woodstoves is approximately three times that from slash burning which is approximately 15 times that from fuel burning. So field burning ranks a distant third to both wood stove smoke and slash burning as a source. David Nelson is right when he says that field burning isn't the major source of Oregon's air pollution. On the other hand opponents of the Burning say it's more important to look at air quality on a local basis and not a statewide average. I'm not at all singling out farmers I think it is accurate that in terms of the entire state. This is perhaps third on the list but to simply take the simplistic viewpoint that this is number three so we ought to pay attention to number one misses the point that in certain micro environments that's the number one and certainly in the summertime in Sweet Home there's nothing else that comes close. Last season the grass seed farmers in Oregon had to deal with nearly 1 million tons of this leftover straw and if all burning was halted there would be even more of it piling up. Some researchers think it could become a good source for paper and

fiber board products or it might be burned in a power plant to produce electricity. Scientists are also looking for other crops to plant in these fields so that farmers can lessen their dependence on grass seed. But all the research into these different areas takes time and time may be running out for the grass seed industry. State Senator Gratton Karens of Eugenes says he will work for a ban on field burning during the upcoming legislative session. Representative Ron Cece of Portland is co-chair of the interim environment and hazardous materials subcommittee. Now we would probably all say that if you put something that's a containment of some kind in drinking water that's not appropriate. But we don't tend to look at the air in the same way because it's big it's outdoors and it's something fairly mammoth you don't see that way but clearly when you throw this stuff into the air and you have an impact on health and the environment has got to be more time looking at. Some of the opponents of field burning are worried that the legislature won't take strong action if a total ban

is not in acted. Bill Johnson says he will work for a ballot initiative to end the practice. I don't doubt that if we have petitions out there they'd practically jerk them out of your hands to get their name on it, it's that bad. There's one other aspect to this controversy we haven't mentioned. Back in the early 70s when it looked like field burning might be phased out. Lawyers for the grass seed industry filed a lawsuit. They claim that in effect a total ban would deprive farmers of certain constitutional rights. Now that case never came to trial but it did help to block the move toward a total ban on field burning. And the grants industry lawyers say they wouldn't hesitate to go back to court if they felt the industry was threatened either by legislative action or by a ballot initiative. What it all means is that some type of field burning will probably continue for another couple of years and possibly longer. While most seed growers are willing to make some changes they also want to make sure that an end to field burning doesn't put an end to their farms.

We've got to do something with this land that's productive not only for the state but on an individual basis. You can't just let it go to weeds and blow away. [music] When Mt. St. Helens erupted more than eight years ago. One hundred fifty thousand acres of timber land were destroyed. But as scientists conservationists and logging interests found it takes more than one big volcanic blast to kill off the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. Here today what was gone yesterday. What the United States Forest Service says it expected some eight years ago was a nice neat vertical explosion accompanied perhaps by a dusting of ash.

Nothing more. What came instead that May 18th were landslides and mud flows, 300 mile per hour winds and temperatures from the blast hotter than 500 degrees Fahrenheit. If you were here eight years ago. The signs of destruction were all around us. It looked and was depressing. It was all one color everything was covered with ash. There wasn't the green plants that you see today the beauty that's out here. It did look like and felt like. Death and destruction. In effect the May 18 1980 eruption created one big huge clearcut knocking down even the oldest and hardiest of trees in the forest including 500 year old 200 foot tall Douglas fir. Today on Weyerhaeuser land north of the volcano some Douglas fir planted since 1980. Now stand 20 feet tall. We had decided to plant just as soon as the cloud had cleared away. We had

made the decision that we were going to regenerate all of our land that we could. Some 18 million trees later Dick Ford tells us what is most surprising is that despite the dramatic and spectacular changes in the landscape. There is little remarkable to report. We have learned that things are normal here. Survival is normal. It's just like it was before the blast and plantations are progressing normally. Weyerhauser expects to log its commercial trees in roughly the year 2020. Commercial interests are not totally responsible for Mt. St. Helens new look. The U.S. Forest Service has been busy planting its own stands not seeking profits. The government is more concerned with aesthetics. In this experimental station in the Clearwater Valley northeast of the volcano. You'll find not just Douglas fir but noble fir spruce western white pine and cottonwoods enough wood here for Beavers to sink their teeth into.

And in case you've forgotten just what this valley floor looked like eight years ago here's a stark reminder land smack up against the Federal plantation has been left untouched. Inside that area we did not salvage the damaged trees and we have not replanted after that time either. Man may be replanting a good part of the blast zone but nature is also slowly reclaiming the land. The ground nearest the crater were up about three thousand feet now. Is inside the National volcanic monument. The closer you get to the crater the farther you are away from your seed source also the closer you come to the crater the deeper the ash. Here it is still bleak and forbidding and will stay that way by act of Congress. Here you can watch life begin again without benefit of man's diligent

hand. Nature is pretty resilient. Most of the plants that came back naturally areas start off with, they came back from underground plant parts Take the hardy fire weed for example. The fireweed thrives on disruption and disorder Never mind fire wind and ash. But there are other lovelier examples of survivors. Despite the 1980 explosion which has been likened to a 24 megaton bomb these delicate Pacific silver fur owe their long lives to a late spring thaw. In this section of the National volcanic monument the silver fir was packed under snow. Mt. St. Helens blew right over. And Ned Lakes tadpoles now enjoy a certain notoriety. They too were safe beneath ice and snow hibernating back in May 1980 [insect sounds] As plant life returned so have deer elk and other wildlife able to

feed off post-blast vegetation. Was there any precedent for this kind of reforestation. Absolutely none, there is no one who had experience at this. Pacific Northwest foresters knew only that life would survive and that the great conifers could grow here again. But this was a whole new ecosystem a forest starting from scratch and the question no one knew the answer to was just how quickly and how well the trees would grow back. I think the one thing is surprising to me is that once we did get trees planted that they're growing as rapidly as they are. Foresters found that conifers and vegetation grew easily despite the fact that few nutrients remained in the soil. The reason, there was little plant life left to compete for those nutrients. For company man Dick Ford the lesson of Mt. St. Helens is a lesson for conservationists who complain about clear cutting says Ford. Man grows a forest faster than nature does. What does that say to

you about life. It goes on and it will go on and it will go on without us. And that's that same thing will happen in normal clearcuts they'll regenerate themselves eventually. It just takes longer than man can do. Factually the Forest Service agrees with Weyerhaeuser philosophically the Forest Service puts a slightly different spin on things. I guess it says that the clear cuts can regenerate. It doesn't necessarily mean that we want to have clear cuts this size. In this case we had no choice. And in fact the Forest Service expects there will one day also be logging on its reforested land. Meanwhile the volcano itself has lapsed into its longest quiet period in eight years. Geologists report no major lava dome activity since the autumn of 1986. Now so little is changing inside the

volcano. But so much is changing just outside it. [music] You know years ago I used to have one of these old Mustangs. It's still hard for me to believe that I sold mine for just a few hundred dollars. Today it might be worth several thousand dollars. But the man that you're going to meet tonight isn't in it for the money. He makes old cars look and run like new again. Because once he started piecing them together some 30 years ago he was hooked. So in a way you might call Hastings Basara, a car junkie. Together we probably got 35 cars pretty much restored. In 1956 someone gave Hastings Basara a Ford Model A vintage 1930. He

hadn't had it long when a load of lumber fell on it and squashed it flat. Maybe that's why Hastings spent the next 30 years making sure that one pile of lumber will never again take away his one and only car. When you build them a chance to pick one up you. Grab it in the store and. When you get another half of a car you put them both together and then you make a car. So this isn't really a junkyard really in here. No we don't- this it don't call a junk, this kind of stuff like these Chevrolets, or you call them junk, around most of the car hounds that's into that. And that's a dirty word. Them are good cars. They're good for building. You don't have to get your hands dirty to collect automobiles. It just takes money and a certain amount of taste. Restoring a vehicle takes dedication. Hastings builds his cars one piece at a time from parts that he's collected over the last 30

years. And all these parts and pieces you see on the ceiling are mostly model A Fords and some Chevrolet but most of it is all Ford that you see in here and I have a lot of extra when I get these cars together. There will be probably enough to build another car or two once I've got all mine done. This car was just like these others, just picked up from pieces. A fender here and a hood there and a steering column and, and when you get enough piled up there together you put it all together and drive it away. The favorite part is driving 'em after you get it all together and get the last bolt hung in it and drive it out down the road. That's my favorite part. But it- quite a bit of workin' up to get to that. [car sounds] When I was a kid we never did have a car but I used to see them drive by you know and I thought well. When I get old enough I'm going to get me a car like that. Well the time I got old enough they had already was

outdated. They didn't even drive them anymore so then I had to start hunting a junk yard to find me one. It gets to be a disease. It uh - you get one going and then that's not enough then you got to go do another one and then you get that one going, you find the piece for another one then you think, well few more parts and I'll have another one. After a year or two you got enough to put another one together. So like I said it just sort of a disease, once you start you can't quit. A little sand and a little primer on that now and it'll be ready for the paint I think. For Hastings, its a fortunate obsession because it's also the way he makes a living, fixing other people's cars, VW's mostly. His shop in Prineville is the only place to get your Bug fixed for miles around. You ready to put this generator on? If fixing old cars is a disease, it's definitely an infectious one. Both Hastings and his sons work in the shop by day and then restore their own cars at night.

Oh yeah dad's (?) collect the bills around here. [music] Part of the reason for having an attention-getting car is just that- the looks you get everywhere you go. Just about every weekend of the summer the Bacara's hit the road for one car meet or another. It's fun to see and to be seen, but more important at these shows is finding someone who has just the right part that you need to finish off one of your own cars. That is a little $41 item. It's a reproduction but that's how much they sold me for that little part because I didn't have original one. It couldn't be forty one dollars worth of material there but its the idea that no one else got it. So if you gotta have it you gotta have it. That idea when you got a 25 or 30 thousand dollar car, a $41 dollar part doesn't make a lot of difference. Making old cars look like new again used to be a backyard hobby, but the backyard's getting crowded these days. It seems everyone wants to own a piece of the past and so now those

pieces are harder to find and more expensive. But Hastings still gets a spark in his eyes when he thinks about the next one. A 47 Buick Special. That's what the car is going to look like eventually, you just sorta gotta have a dream, now it looks like a pile of junk but eventually it'll turn out to be a car. But it'll be a beautiful car when it's done. I got all kinds of hope for it. I don't know what I'll go on next. I thought about airplanes. [airplane sound] Next week on Front Street weekly, from Oak Ridge, Oregon "The Sting", a report on charges of child pornography and sexual abuse involving one of the town's most prominent citizens and a behind the scenes look at how state and federal agencies cooperated in the investigation. And we'll meet a family from eastern Oregon that is on a mission. A mission to China to help ranchers there

improve productivity. That's next week on Front Street Weekly. [Music playing]