What Next?

As you know the Yamhill County Planning Commission held its hearing on the proposal to rezone the dump to farmland back on November 7.  If the rezoning goes through, the landfill will be able to expand subject only to site design review conditions.

The PC is taking additional comments through this Thursday, November 21 at 5:00 pm (send your comments to:  fridayk@co.yamhill.or.us).*  Waste Management, which proposed the rezoning, then gets another 6 days to respond.

Despite the fact that the PC is still taking comment and won't vote on the rezoning request until its December 5 meeting, the County Board of Commissioners has already scheduled its own hearing.  That will begin Thursday, December 12 at 10:00 AM.  Both the Dec 5 (7:00 PM) and Dec 12 meetings will be held in McMinnville Civic Hall, 200 2nd Street, McMinnville (corner of Baker).

Planning Commission Hearing

The big news coming out of the PC hearing came in two flavors:

First, the County Planning Staff recommended that a Limited Use Overlay Zone be placed on all acres Waste Management owns around the dump.  The Zone would prevent waste disposal on all but 37 of those acres.

Second, the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has reclassified the soils at the dump site from high-value farm soils, Classes I-IV, to miscellaneous/dump soil.  According to the NRCS, as soon as waste is deposited on a site, the soil class changes.

In addition, the Oregon Department of Agriculture pointed out that the land itself is no longer considered "agricultural land," for two completely different reasons:  1) the soil reclassification takes the land out of the definition of ag land in Oregon Planning Goal 3 and 2) that definition explicitly excludes land removed from EFU zoning via an exception.  The PWS-zoned land beneath and around the dump was removed from EFU zoning back in 1980 via the exception process.

PC Chair Daryl Garrettson asked whether land must have farmable soils in order to be zoned EFU.  Bill Kabeiseman of Garvey Schubert Barer, the Stop the Dump Coalition's attorney, answered squarely, "Yes."

Wrote Kabeiseman:

"As required by state law, the County has implemented ORS 215.243 [purpose of EFU zoning is to protect farmland], as well as Goal 3, through the adoption of exclusive farm use zoning district.  Because the EFU district implements state policy to preserve agricultural land, land within the EFU district must meet the definition of agricultural land."

He cited a state Supreme Court decision and a Land Use Board of Appeals case to support his argument.

With respect to the proposed Overlay Zone, expansion opponents pointed out that the overlay provided little assurance that the dump would not be expanded again beyond the current anticipated 37-acre request.  Unlike a permanent conservation easement, a Limited Use Overlay Zone could easily be changed by the County in the future at the request of Waste Management or a successor owner.

Moreover, in its comments Waste Management asked that the overlay not prevent lands outside the 37-acre expansion from being used for unspecified "landfill operations."

The Stop the Dump Coalition expects to file a written response to the overlay request by this Thursday's deadline.

*Be sure to include your name and snail mail address!  The County must mail notices to each person who participates in the hearing.