CAPITOL — While environmentalists are supporting the state’s proposed ban on household trash burning, the New York Farm Bureau is opposed and legislators from agricultural areas are raising objections.

Earlier this month, the Department of Environmental Conservation announced the proposed ban, saying: “Once considered harmless, open burning has been found to release more dangerous chemicals into the air than thought generations ago,” including dioxin. The DEC proposal would extend to rural areas a ban on open burning of residential wastes that has been in effect in cities, villages and towns with populations of 20,000 or more since 1972.

The ban would exempt burning of agricultural wastes, not including plastic. Nevertheless, Farm Bureau spokesman Peter Gregg said it would create a hardship for farms located a long way from a landfill or transfer station, especially now with gas prices at record highs.

Gregg noted that the state budget passed in April included $350,000 in the environmental protection fund for a pilot program involving the state picking up and disposing of farmers’ nonrecyclable waste.

DEC spokesman Yancey Roy said, “The idea is not only about picking up the material, but also possibly finding a market or alternative use for it. This program is in its beginning stages.”

Gregg said the program should be given time to get off the ground, and if successful, should be expanded. Meanwhile, he said, the DEC should not outlaw burning.

Roger Downs, a Sierra Club lobbyist, said farmers should accept tougher regulations because burning could result in the contamination of the food supply. Open-pit burning, he said, may put more dioxin in the air than anything else in New York, and dioxin could get into milk.

John Sheehan of the Adirondack Council also supported the ban, saying burning was a threat to clean water as well as the air. People can pollute their own wells, he said, as contamination seeps down from a burn barrel into the water table.

But the leaders of both the Senate and Assembly agriculture committees were dubious. Assemblyman William Magee, D-Nelson, said it might be better for the DEC to have sought the changes through legislation, rather than by imposing its own regulations. He also expressed concern that because home owners will not get the exemptions the DEC is proposing for farmers, they will no longer be allowed to burn leaves. Magee said he is studying the matter.

Stronger opposition may be expected from the Senate, where the chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee, Catharine Young, R-Olean, supported the Farm Bureau’s position and brought up other concerns. She said the bill could create other environmental problems, such as littering, and questioned how the DEC could enforce things like restrictions on the size of campfires.

Young said she has expressed her concerns to the DEC as part of the public comment process in the regulatory procedure. She declined to comment on whether she might introduce legislation to block the regulations, saying she would wait to see the DEC’s final proposal. That makes legislation unlikely this legislative session, which is due to end on June 23.

Another Republican senator, James Seward, R-Milford, whose district includes Schoharie County, said the matter is best left to local governments, although, he said, “I wouldn’t want to live next to a burn barrel.” Magee also expressed a preference for leaving it to local governments. However, environmental organizations often get their way in the Assembly, and they support the burn ban.

The DEC has scheduled public hearings around the state from June 23 to July 2. In Albany, hearings will be held at the DEC’s central office, 625 Broadway, from 9:30 a.m. to noon and 5 to 8 p.m. June 25.

Roy said the regulations would likely not be adopted until near the end of this year.