Why You Need to Tell the Planning Commission: No Rezone for Riverbend!

This Thursday, November 7, Waste Management will ask the County Planning Commission to rezone Riverbend Landfill to farmland.  Once rezoned, nothing will prevent landfill expansion now or in the future.

Show up at the Planning Commission meeting to express your opposition to this bizarre rezoning scheme!

WHEN: Thursday, November 7th  at 7:00 PM

WHERE: McMinnville Civic Center-200 Second Street at Baker

Can't attend? We'll miss you but you can still help.  Email Ken Friday (fridayk@co.yamhill.or.us) at the Yamhill County Planning Department. Tell him you want the Planning Commissioners to vote NO on Riverbend's rezoning request.   

Here's what's at stake:  Riverbend says it wants 25 more years of garbage storage on a mere 37 acres, but if the existing dump is rezoned, Riverbend will have the legal right to expand indefinitely onto the hundreds of farm acres adjacent to the dump that Waste Management  already owns.  Moreover, once the dump has expanded, Waste Management can buy the farmland next door and expand again.

Here's why:  State law allows counties to site landfills on exclusive farm use land even though landfills are not agricultural uses. Until two years ago, Yamhill County prohibited dumps on farmland.  But in the fall of 2011, the County amended its Zoning Ordinance to allow existing landfills to expand onto land zoned for farming subject only to site design review.  

Here's the catch:  The existing dump must also be in a farm zone, but Riverbend is in the PWS (Public Works Safety) zone.  Hence the need to rezone a mountain of garbage that can NEVER be farmed from PWS to Exclusive Farm Use.

Waste Management (Riverbend's Texas-based corporate owner) is telling everyone that the rezoning is no big deal because the County still has to approve specific expansion plans.  The trouble is the County can't deny the expansion once the rezoning is approved -- it can only require expansion to meet the very basic requirements of a site design review.  The Zoning Ordinance specifically prohibits the County from requiring the dump to meet tougher standards.

In 2008 Riverbend sought a 96-acre landfill expansion that would be 100 feet higher than what the dump is now.  When the County applied site design review back then, the only problem the County found was that the proposed dump was too high.  The County had no problem approving 96 additional acres of garbage, including moving a salmon-bearing creek!  The County didn't deny expansion then; don't expect the County to nix anything now.

Rezoning puts all the farmland owned by Waste Management at risk, despite the County's own Comprehensive Plan goals, which require farmland protection.  Decades down the road, Waste Management -- or any other corporation that might buy the dump -- will be allowed by the Zoning Ordinance  to continue expanding onto all contiguous EFU acreage the corporation owns.  

The dump is an eyesore, an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen, and a health risk, all on the edge of McMinnville.  YAMHILL COUNTY DESERVES BETTER.  Tell the Planning Commission to vote NO on rezoning!