Back in April, the Oregon Supreme Court decided that an otherwise permitted nonfarm use (eg, a landfill) cannot be allowed on farmland (eg, the banks of the South Yamhill River) if the nonfarm use forces a change in "accepted farm practices" on surrounding farms, even if the nonfarm use compensates farmers for the change.
One of the "farm practices" hotly debated during hearings in front of the County Planning Commission and Board of Commissioners involved litter from the dump and from garbage-hauling trucks that had drifted into farm fields. Plastic bags are especially nasty in hay and grass fields and must be removed by hand in order to avoid fouling harvesting equipment.
To solve this problem, the County required Riverbend Landfill to pay for litter patrols on neighboring farms. These payments, the County reasoned, would reduce any litter problem below the legally-important "significant" level. With this condition in place, the County approved Riverbend's expansion plan.
Expansion opponents cried foul, charging that such a "pay to play" (or "pay to expand onto farmland") proposal ran counter to the legislature's intent to preserve farmland. The Supreme Court agreed, finding that the County was wrong to consider such payments when it concluded that the dump's proposed expansion would not impact farm practices "significantly."
The Supreme Court directed the state Land Use
Board of Appeals (LUBA) to "reconsider whether the county correctly determined that the change in accepted farm practices was not substantial." Stop the Dump Coalition v. Yamhill County (2019) 364 Or 432, 462.
LUBA's ruling today confirms that Riverbend Landfill's proposed expansion would in fact significantly change accepted farm practices on McPhillips Farms, which operates on property adjacent to the dump. LUBA then sent the landfill expansion back to Yamhill County to reconsider its expansion approval.
Farmer Ramsey McPhillips, who has fought landfill expansion for more than a decade, declared, "This is a
clear victory. One can finally hope that the County will deny Riverbend's
application once and for all and that the county, and all those who have
fought diligently to preserve the environment, our tourism, and our best-in-the-nation
farmland, can get back to focusing on other important County issues."
