Smoke Management Programs

Smoke management programs establish a basic framework of procedures and requirements when managers are considering resource benefits. These programs are typically developed by States and Tribes with cooperation and participation by wildland owners and managers. The purposes of smoke management programs are to mitigate the nuisance (such as impacts on air quality below the level of ambient standards) and public safety hazards (such as visibility on roads and airports) posed by smoke intrusions into populated areas; to prevent significant deterioration of air quality and NAAQS violations; and to address visibility impacts in Class I areas.

The Interim Air Quality Policy on Wildland and Prescribed Fires (EPA 1998) provides clear guidelines for establishing the need for and content of smoke management programs and assigns accountability to State and Tribal air quality managers for developing and adopting regulations for a program. Measured PM10 NAAQS exceedances attributable to fires, including some prescribed fires and wildland fires managed for resource benefits, can be excluded from air quality data sets used to determine attainment status for a State. Special consideration will be given if the State or Tribal air quality manager certifies in a letter to the administrator of EPA that at least a basic smoke management program has been adopted and implemented.

States with smoke management programs that have authorized a central agency or office to make burn/no- burn decisions include Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho/Montana, Washington, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida, South Carolina, Utah, North Carolina, and Wyoming (Battye and others 1999). In many other States, the decision to burn rests in the hands of the persons conducting the burn, local fire departments, or local authorities. These States include Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. In yet other States (New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and others), burn permits are required and may be subject to State air agency oversight if burning is conducted near nonattainment areas or areas sensitive to smoke (Core 1989; Hardy and others 2001). In addition, many private landowners, nonprofit conservation organizations and government agencies voluntarily practice responsible smoke management to maintain goodwill in their communities.

Smoke management programs have been established and are operated on an on-going basis because of local, regional, and national concerns about the impact of prescribed burning on air quality. The number, complexity, and cost of operating these programs underscore the potential significance of prescribed fires impact on air quality on a national scale.

Smoke management programs across the nation have changed significantly since the mid-1980s. In the Pacific Northwest, there have been reductions in prescribed fire smoke management programs because of the decline in large-scale clearcut burning of forest harvesting residues. Current smoke management programs across the West have to place a much greater focus than in the past on understory burning to restore declining forest health, on burns to reduce fire hazards, or on burns to meet wildlife habitat objectives. All across the nation, an increasing number of people living within the wildland-urban interface have placed new emphasis on the need to minimize smoke impacts on residents living near fires. Increasing air quality regulatory pressures, fire manager liability issues, and the increased likelihood of fire escapement in overstocked forestlands have all placed ever-greater demands on fire practitioners.

As these demands have increased, so have the number and complexity of smoke management programs nationwide (Hardy and others 2001). Although the complexity of these programs varies widely from State to State, the key to a successful program always lies in its ability to balance the use of prescribed fire with air quality, environmental, legal, and social requirements. Increasingly, this has meant adoption of formalized burn authorization procedures issued by program managers who are responsible for overseeing burning on both public and private lands on a daily basis. Coordinated burn operations are based on meteorological forecasts, the location of smoke-sensitive receptors, fuel conditions, and a myriad of other considerations. Increasingly, public notification of planned burning activity and monitoring of smoke transport, as well as fire practitioner training and program enforcement, are becoming more common (Battye and others 1999).

As inter-State smoke transport becomes a larger issue, agencies are expanding coordination. For example, land management agencies in Californias San Joaquin Valley are using a new centralized, electronic database, Prescribed Fire Incident Reporting System (PFIRS), to schedule fires and to share information on expected emissions and smoke trans- port with California and Nevada air and land management agencies (Little n.d.). This trend is likely to continue as States begin to work on regional haze control programs.

The Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP) Fire Emissions Joint Forum (FEJF) has issued a draft policy to set the criteria for enhanced smoke management plans for visibility protection in the West (Fire Emissions Joint Forum 2002). The policy document concludes that the regional haze rule can be satisfied only by the States and Tribes establishing an emission tracking system for all prescribed fires and wildland fires; by managing smoke from all fires; and by implementing smoke management systems that include nine elements:

1. Actions to minimize emissions from fire
2. Evaluation of smoke dispersion
3. Alternatives to fire
4. Public notification of burning
5. Air quality monitoring
6. Surveillance and enforcement
7. Program evaluation
8. Burn authorization
9. Regional coordination.

The enhanced smoke management plan (ESMP) policy would enable Western States and Tribes to minimize increases in emissions and show reasonable progress toward the natural visibility goal. The Fire Emissions Joint Forum is developing additional policy and technical tools that will support ESMP policy and its implementation, such as recommendations for creation of an annual emissions goal, availability and feasibility of alternatives to burning, recommendations for managing fire emissions sources, guidance for feasibility determinations, and a method for tracking fire emissions.