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8 CapitalPress.com February 16, 2018 Inslee sees ag warming to carbon tax, but farm groups don’t Governor sees ‘revolution’ of support By DON JENKINS Capital Press OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee spent three days in Eastern Washington last week and came back saying he had never heard so much support in farm country for taxing fossil fuels to combat climate change. “I went into a fruit com- pany in Wenatchee, talked to the production manager, who said, ‘We want action on cli- mate change,’” Inslee said, speaking to reporters. “That’s really amazing to have agri- cultural leaders say that.” The fruit company the gov- ernor referred to was Northern Fruit. Messages to the compa- ny were not answered. The Washington State De- partment of Agriculture doc- umented that the extremely hot and dry summer of 2015 affected the size of apples and cherries. Washington State Tree Fruit Association President Jon DeVaney, however, said he’s not heard any orchard attribute losses to climate change. “It’s difficult to say what’s climate change and what’s weather,” he said. Inslee has made climate change his signature issue. He has spoken at United Na- tions conferences, the Paris climate summit and most re- cently at the World Econom- ic Forum in Davos, Switzer- land. At home, however, he has been unable to persuade the Legislature to tax carbon to discourage the consump- tion of fossil fuels. The policy has achieved a minor milestone this session. The Democrat-controlled Senate Energy, Environment Don Jenkins/Capital Press Washington Gov. Jay Inslee gestures at a press conference Feb. 8 in Olympia. Inslee says he sees a “revolution” in support for a car- bon tax, including from agriculture, though the state’s largest farm group, the Washington Farm Bureau, remains staunchly opposed. and Technology Committee advanced a bill to tax carbon at $10 per ton, half the level Inslee proposed. The tax would grow au- tomatically to $30 a ton by 2030. It’s not a straight gas tax, but it would eventually increase gas prices by an es- timated 30 cents a gallon. The tax also would increase the cost of electricity and natural gas, The bill remains far from the governor’s desk, but Ins- lee said he was “ecstatic this has gone through the first committee.” “I can’t overstate how opti- mistic I am about this because there are so many open minds to this idea, particularly in the business community,” he said. “Look, we have never had businesses in the state of Washington engage in a di- alogue about how to reduce carbon pollution. This is like a revolution.” The Washington Farm Bureau has been among the staunchest opponents of a car- bon tax, and remains so. An energy tax would increase the cost of transportation, fertil- izer and other inputs and put Washington farmers at a com- petitive disadvantage in the global marketplace, according to the Farm Bureau. Rather than growing alarm over climate change, the spec- ter of climate-change activists qualifying their carbon tax proposal for the November ballot may be driving support among lawmakers for a bill this year, Farm Bureau asso- ciate director of government relations Evan Sheffels said. “The momentum would be due to the fear that an initia- tive would be worse,” he said. The Farm Bureau has not adopted that thinking. “Al- most across the board, farmers and ranchers are experiencing painfully low commodity pric- es and (a carbon tax) just cre- ates more costs,” Sheffels said. Carbon-tax opponents in Olympia aren’t debating cli- mate-change science. They are making pocketbook points and questioning whether one state’s stand on carbon would have any effect on tempera- tures. “We’re not arguing with the governor about climate change. We just question whether the right way to deal with it is with a state tax,” DeVaney said. “It essentially drives up our in-state produc- tion costs.” Farm leaders urge Senate to fix law on livestock gas reports Senate bill said to be coming By DON JENKINS Capital Press A court mandate to report that decaying manure is re- leasing hazardous gas will expose farmers to penalties and interfere with respond- ing to actual emergencies, national farm leaders told a U.S. Senate committee on Feb. 7. American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said he would wel- come Congress nullifying a D.C. Circuit Court decision to make farmers report live- stock emissions to the Coast Guard. “It’s a big issue across farmland,” Duvall said to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “We applaud the senators getting involved in trying to fix something that is wrong.” The committee hearing was on the broad topic of how regulations affect agri- culture. Many of the ques- tions and comments from senators were about the D.C. court’s decision, due to take effect May 1. The court sided with environmental groups and applied the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act to agriculture. Livestock operations that emit more than 100 pounds of ammo- nia or hydrogen sulfide in a 24-hour period will have to register with the Coast Guard’s National Response Center. The center coor- dinates federal emergency responses to chemical leaks and spills. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., called the court’s decision “unfortunate” and said he expects colleagues to introduce a bill to affirm that Congress didn’t intend for the 1980 act, commonly U.S. Senate American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall testifies Feb. 7 before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in Washington, D.C. Duvall said a court order to report emissions from manure poses problems for farmers and emergency responders. known as the Superfund law, to cover agriculture. National Pork Producers Council President Howard Hill said the trade group “would support that bill 100 percent.” “We don’t consider farm- ing and the emissions from a farm an emergency. It’s an everyday process, and we ask ourselves, ‘Who wants this information?’ In some cases, it’s advocates who don’t want livestock pro- duction, and they can mis- use that information,” he said. The court ruled last year, but has granted several de- lays to give the Environmen- tal Protection Agency time to prepare farmers to reg- ister their livestock as con- tinuously releasing gas. The rule will affect an unknown number of farms. Estimates range from about 45,000 to more than 200,000. The EPA says there is no generally accepted way to calculate emissions. Failing to report a range of emissions, however, can be punished with fines of up to $50,000 a day. The act also allows citizen lawsuits to force compliance. “It would put our farmers at risk,” said Duvall, a beef and poultry producer. “You know I have 400 momma cows that have calves spread out over 1,500 acres in Greensboro, Georgia. How in the world am I going to monitor that? How am I go- ing to report that? And then I have four chicken houses. How am I going to report the emissions of those animals? It puts us at a big liability. There is no need to do it.” Farms that meet the threshold will not be re- quired to reduce emissions. The court agreed with envi- ronmental groups that hav- ing the information on file could be useful to first re- sponders investigating foul odors. Duvall said requiring tens of thousands or hun- dreds of thousands of pro- ducers to report will burden the Coast Guard. He said he also was concerned about the details that farmers will have to disclose about their operations. “The individual farmer will have to give up his per- sonal information, where he lives, and that exposes him to being harassed by activ- ists all around, and don’t think that’s not happening because it does happen,” he said. Oregon Department of Forestry As Democrats in the Legislature propose a “cap-and-trade” carbon measure, timber companies and several lawmakers are advocating a bill that would require the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Forestry to evaluate using “natural ecosystems” to absorb and store carbon as an alternative. Carbon sequestration proposed as ‘cap-and-trade’ alternative Bill would direct Oregon regulators to study sequestering carbon By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press SALEM — Oregon’s forestry and environmental regulators would study “se- questering” carbon as a pos- sible alternative to penalizing emissions under a bill before the House Agriculture Com- mittee. Lawmakers are currently debating a controversial and prominent “cap-and-trade” proposal under which compa- nies that exceed a ceiling on carbon emissions could buy credits from those that fall be- low it. Timber companies and several lawmakers are advo- cating a less publicized car- bon-related bill that would require the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Forestry to evaluate using “natural eco- systems” to absorb and store carbon while promoting eco- nomic development, as well as using tax incentives for companies to reduce carbon emissions. Under House Bill 4109, the study would also examine “regional approaches” to re- duce carbon emissions “other than adopting or participating in a greenhouse cap-and-trade system.” Oregon’s annual wildfires emit more carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, fine particulates and volatile organic com- pounds than industrial sources or vehicles, said Rep. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford, the bill’s chief sponsor. Supporters of HB 4109 argue it would encourage dis- cussions about thinning over- stocked federal lands that are prone to catastrophic forest fires. There’s also an opportuni- ty to direct harvested timber toward novel products such as “cross-laminated timber,” or CLT, which is used for larg- er-scale buildings. These objectives can be ac- complished without sacrific- ing “viewsheds” or native fish — otherwise, projects would just wind up in court, said Ken Humberston, a member of the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners. However, the bill encoun- tered some mild criticism from the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit. While the group supports carbon sequestration to fight climate change, the science isn’t yet conclusive as to the best return-on-investment for carbon sequestration, said Catherine Macdon- ald, its Oregon conservation director. The study should be ex- panded to include Oregon State University and to exam- ine the most effective meth- ods to increase carbon seques- tration, she said. A work session on HB 4109 was scheduled for Feb. 15, which is the legislative deadline for the proposal to be approved by the House Agri- culture Committee. 7-3/102