"Next year, residents of the southern Willamette Valley will experience a summer unlike any experienced in more than half a century.

It will be a summer free of the hazy skies and ominous pillars of smoke rising up from burning grass seed fields.

The Oregon Legislature Monday passed a ban on open field burning on the Willamette Valley floor. Except for some exempted areas east of Salem, the allowable acreage that can be open-burned will be halved to 20,000 this year and prohibited altogether in 2010."

David Steves reports for the Eugene Register-Guard June 30, 2009. [2]