The first day of open field burning Friday stirred up the Eugene group working to ban the practice.

Farmers torched 4,815 acres in Linn, Marion and Clackamas counties, according to a spokesperson for the Smoke Management Program in the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

The department did not say whether the burning caused any smoke to linger near the ground, which the management program is intended to prevent.

After four days of preparatory burning and one day of open burning, the field-fire total so far this summer is 4,984 acres.

Under state law, Willamette Valley grass seed growers can burn up to 65,000 acres of registered fields per season, but in recent years the total has been about 50,000, and last year it was only 33,110.

Friday morning the Ag Department said that an "increasing southwesterly flow aloft will likely provide favorable mixing heights and transport winds for open burning this afternoon."

On Friday afternoon the Campaign to End Field Burning, based at the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, sent out an e-mail passing on a report that "two mushroom clouds were visible to the north and headed in the direction of Eugene."

"Please join the effort to stop this antiquated and dangerous practice," pleaded Dan Galpern, co-director of the campaign. "We are determined to press this issue through the summer, fall, and at the legislature next year as necessary."

Mike Carrier, the governor's director for natural-resources policy, told the Democrat-Herald in June that the governor plans to ask the legislature in 2009 to phase down field burning over the following years and end it by about 2016.

Although the practice has been much diminished since the 1980s, some growers still occasionally find it necessary to burn their fields after harvest to assure the quality of the subsequent crop.

Burning is regulated by the Department of Agriculture's Smoke Management Program. Open burning is allowed only when the forecast calls for winds that will carry the smoke up and away to the east.

Democrat-Herald