The news media has used quite a bit of ink in recent weeks covering the actions of regulatory agencies charged with cleaning the state's air. The California Air Resources Board voted 20-23 last week to delay cleaning up San Joaquin Valley air 11 years past the current deadline of 2012, according to news reports such as this one on the CBS news affiliate in Fresno. Many newspapers have editorialized against the decision. The Sacramento Bee called it "pitiful." The San Francisco Chronicle joked that valley smog "can also blind state regulators to their duty."
There will be more press to come. On Thursday and Friday, CARB will meet in Los Angeles to discuss a wide variety of measures, including Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed "early action measures" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the agency's agenda posted online.
Meanwhile, UC Cooperative Extension farm advisors continue to help farmers do their part to clean California's air. One in particular is Brent Holtz of Madera County, who has advocated chipping or shredding of orchard prunings as an alternative to burning for 10 years. Here is a 2002 article about his research. Freelance writer Marni Katz went to Holtz for comment on an article she wrote about burning alternatives for the June 2007 issue of Pacific Nut Producer. (The article is not available on the Web.)
Holtz noted in the article that about 2,000 pounds of green almond prunings are removed per acre with each almond pruning -- which could add up to more than 1 billion pounds of green material burned in California.
One challenge with chipping and shredding is the chance that small pieces of wood could be collected with the nuts at harvest. The key is getting chippings or shreddings to stick to the soil rather than be picked up at harvest, Holtz says.
". . . We have advised growers to lightly till or scratch the soil surface in order to enhance wood debris contact with the soil," Holtz is quoted. "We believe soil contact is more critical to holding wood debris in the orchard than the actual size of the wood debris or its decomposition rate."