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TID embroiled in burning issue Dani Dodge photo A firefighter and an onlooker watch smoke billow from an orchard outside Talent Friday morning. Firefighters halted the burning of excess fuel in smudge pots because they believed it was an illegal burn. Apparently deliberate smudge pot fires startle residents, drivers By DANI DODGE TALENT -- The plume of dense, black smoke was visible to everyone on their morning commute Friday on Interstate 5. Firefighters attending to a car accident just outside of Ashland called it in, as did more than a dozen concerned people who spotted it from their homes and cars. But neither a home nor a pile of debris was responsible for the dark, mushroom-shaped cloud darkening the sky. Apparently, a Talent Irrigation District employee lit about 75 smudge pots in an orchard the agency owns at Culver and Hartley roads and simply let them burn -- even though the temperature definitely was above freezing. The smudge pots kept blazing until about 9 a.m., when firefighters from Fire District 5 determined it was an illegal burn and slogged through the muddy orchard, capping off the flames. The Department of Environmental Quality is investigating the burn. "What were they thinking?" DEQ's Air Quality Manager, John Becker, asked. "Burning petroleum is a no-no. ... It gives off all kinds of toxins." Orchardists sometimes use the smudge pots during early spring cold snaps, to warm the air around their trees and make sure the young fruit doesn't freeze. The only time that orchardists can legally burn their smudge pots is when their plants need protection, Becker said. But firefighters at the scene of the burn Friday said it was their understanding that TID was burning the smudge pots to get rid of the fuel inside them, so the land could be cleared for a new building. TID manager Hollie Cannon did not return phone calls Friday to the Mail Tribune. Don Minear, who left the TID board in January after 30 years of service, saw the smoke while he shot a round of golf at the Rogue Valley Manor. He said that TID does own about 18 acres where the burn occurred. The irrigation district plans to take out some orchards to use the land for storing pipes and other water-related items. He also said TID eventually will locate their headquarters on the property. He was as baffled by the burning as everyone else."I'm wondering if they didn't get on fire accidently," Minear said. "I don't know why they would be burning them." Many people driving by on the freeway searched out the source of the black smoke. When one woman found it, she bemoaned the fact that someone would create so much pollution so close to Earth Day. Others also were angry. "What gives them the right to pollute the air?" asked Talent resident David Kauwe. "I'm pretty disgusted with it. It's pretty gross." The firefighters who put out the blaze said it was an unusual occurrence. "It's a one-time thing," said firefighter Chad Pisors. "We'll probably never see it again." Fire District 5 Captain Richard Scowden said he gave the order to stop the fires after checking the county's burn regulations. "It states under the open burn regulations that burning of petroleum product or any other material that produces a dense smoke is prohibited," he said. He said TID hadn't taken out any special permits that would have allowed the burn, and said he said he talked to a DEQ investigator Friday. This isn't the first time that the Talent Irrigation District has been investigated for harming the environment. After spraying Spike 80w along irrigation ditches for three years in the mid-1990s, hundreds of mature trees died. DEQ fined the agency more than $400,000 after 92,000 infant salmon and steelhead were killed when a TID herbicide polluted a second of Bear Creek north of Ashland. But Becker said it's as yet unknown whether TID had a good explanation for lighting the fires on a fairly warm day. "If they were doing it for agricultural purposes then that's something they could do," he said. "The issue was, no one else was doing it." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA