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CapitalPress.com
March 10, 2017
Oregon
Pendleton native to lead reborn Water Coalition
Group to focus on
education, outreach
By GEORGE PLAVEN
EO Media Group
PENDLETON, Ore. — Marika
Sitz knew she wanted to return to
Eastern Oregon. Her timing couldn’t
be better.
After graduating from Pendleton
High School in 2011, Sitz moved to
the Silicon Valley, where she earned
her bachelor’s degree in human bi-
ology from Stanford University. Her
focus was predominantly on food
and agricultural systems, which led
to an interest in water development
and sustainability.
Now, as local farmers find them-
selves on the cusp of obtaining new
irrigation supplies that could mean
hundreds of millions of dollars for
the basin, Sitz has come home to re-
vive the dormant Oregon Water Co-
alition, a nonprofit group formed 25
years ago to promote water resourc-
es.
Sitz, 24, was officially hired in
January as coordinator for the co-
alition. She will serve at the rec-
ommendation of an eight-member
board of directors, including long-
time irrigators and irrigation district
managers.
“It’s nice to be able to come back
to a small town like this and have an
opportunity like this,” Sitz said.
Sitz is a former PHS athlete and
Lantern Cup winner, the school’s
highest award for personal and
classroom achievement. Her family
comes from a cattle ranching back-
ground and she said rural issues have
always informed her way of think-
ing — even after college in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
Sitz graduated from Stanford
in 2015, and followed that up with
a one-year fellowship with the Bill
Lane Center for the American West.
It was there she became involved in
a program called Water in the West,
E.J. Harris/EO Media Group
Marika Sitz has returned to Eastern Oregon to revive the Oregon Water Coalition
and will be helping promote water resources and coordinated education and out-
reach.
researching solutions to the region’s
intensifying water shortage.
From there, Sitz said she began
looking at opportunities in Oregon
and came across the Northeast Or-
egon Water Association, or NOWA.
That’s the group working to nego-
tiate new mitigated water rights for
Umatilla and Morrow county farm-
ers from the Columbia River, a del-
icate and lengthy effort with poten-
tially huge economic rewards.
Sitz reached out to J.R. Cook,
executive director of NOWA and a
board member for the Oregon Wa-
ter Coalition. Cook said he felt Sitz
would be a great fit for the water
coalition, which formed in 1992 to
educate and do outreach, but had
largely become inactive and nearly
dissolved last year.
“(Sitz) lit a fire under us,” Cook
said.
With Sitz on board, Cook said
the coalition has been reborn. And
though Sitz said she is still learn-
ing the ropes, she is already at work
rebuilding their website and re-es-
tablishing their community partner-
ships.
“It’s a little bit about finding our
place,” she said.
Ray Kopacz, coalition vice pres-
ident and manager of the Stanfield
Irrigation District, said it will take
some time to get themselves orga-
nized after years of sitting in limbo.
“It never really died. We just lost
some key people who were helping
run it,” Kopacz said.
Sitz plans to stay with the coali-
tion for two years before applying
to law school. She said the relation-
ships she builds now will be invalu-
able down the road.
“Water is not going to be-
come any less important in the fu-
ture,” she said. “It’s just key to
the economic engine of so many
areas.”
When Sitz leaves, Cook said they
hope to continue recruiting new
blood to carry on the work that’s
already been done. It has taken 30
years of work to get to where they
are now, he said, and it will be up to
the new guard to see many of these
projects to fruition.
“The goal is to bring peo-
ple Marika’s age back our way to
work for northeast Oregon,” Cook
said.
Lawmakers consider on-farm treatment of sewage sludge
Bill would clarify
land use law to
allow mobile
biosolid processing
in farm zones
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SALEM — Sewage sludge
already serves as fertilizer on
Oregon farms but a proposed
bill would also permit pro-
cessing the waste within farm
zones.
It’s common for biosolids,
also called human manure,
to be treated at wastewater
plants and then applied to
fields that aren’t producing
crops meant for human con-
sumption.
Wayne Buma, who oper-
ates AAA Advanced Septic
Cleaning in Southern Or-
Capital Press File
Oregon legislators are considering a bill that would clarify land use
laws to allow mobile biosolid processing in farm zones.
egon, wanted to use waste
from septic tanks in the same
way but ran into troubles
with Jackson County’s gov-
ernment.
The county’s objection
wasn’t based on sanitary is-
sues, but rather Oregon’s land
use laws: It wasn’t clear that
sewage treatment is allowed
on land zoned for “exclusive
farm use.”
“There is nothing new
going on as far as the safe-
ty. All that has been ap-
proved,” Buma told mem-
bers of the House Agriculture
Committee at a March 2
hearing.
Under House Bill 2179,
the statute would clarify that
on-farm biosolids treatment is
allowed in farm zones as long
as it’s conducted with mobile
units.
If on-farm biosolid treat-
ment isn’t allowed, Buma said
he’d have to separately pro-
cess the waste at the location
of each septic tank, rather than
collectively treat the material
in a large tank at the site of ap-
plication.
“Right now, it’s bot-
tle-necked,” he said.
The treatment process
described by Buma, which
is permitted by Oregon’s
Department of Environ-
mental Quality, is fairly
straightforward.
Biosolids are filtered to
remove plastic and other de-
bris, then agricultural lime is
mixed with the waste to make
it alkaline and kill pathogens.
The sterilized biosolids are
then spread across a field with
a truck.
“It’s a stable product, it’s
not a haz-mat material,” Buma
said of the lime that’s integral
to the process.
Legislators seemed amena-
ble to HB 2179, with the com-
mittee’s chairman, Brian Clem,
D-Salem, testifying in favor of
the bill as a “no-brainer.”
While Oregon’s land use
laws generally confine pro-
cessing activities within “ur-
ban growth boundaries,” that
often involves increasing the
“truck miles” required to trans-
port materials, Clem said.
In this case, there is no con-
struction of a permanent facil-
ity that would take farmland
out of production, he said.
“If it’s not displacing farm-
land, I think it’s good to have
processing as close to the
source of the material as pos-
sible,” Clem said.
10-4/#17
Lawmakers
back away from
controversial
farm property
tax bill
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SALEM — Intense oppo-
sition from Oregon’s farmers,
ranchers and forestland own-
ers has apparently convinced
lawmakers to back away from
altering key property tax pro-
visions affecting agriculture
and forestry.
Machinery used for agri-
culture and forestry is exempt
from property tax assessments
while property dedicated to
producing crops, livestock
and timber is less heavily
taxed than other real estate.
Under the original lan-
guage of House Bill 2859, the
property tax exemption for
equipment and the farm use
assessment for land would ex-
pire in 2024 unless renewed
by lawmakers.
The proposal evoked alarm
in Oregon’s natural resource
community, which turned out
in full force at a March 1 hear-
ing to argue that creating a
“sunset” for these provisions
would financially destabilize
farming, ranching and forest-
ry.
By the end of the hearing,
the overwhelmingly negative
testimony against HB 2859
seemed to have the desired ef-
fect on members of the House
Revenue Committee.
“I’m pretty convinced put-
ting a sunset on these things
that are very long-term assets
doesn’t make any sense,” said
committee Chairman Phil
Barnhart, D-Eugene.
At the beginning of the
hearing, Barnhart said the bill
was drafted in response to an
audit from Oregon’s Secretary
of State’s Office, which called
for periodic review of existing
property tax exemptions and
tax credits.
In light of the objections
to HB 2859, though, Barn-
hart said he thought the sunset
provisions related to natural
resources should be eliminat-
ed from the bill.
The suggestion drew no
objections from other com-
mittee members, so Barnhart
said they would only consider
the remaining provisions of
HB 2859 related to economic
development and other issues.
“I think you should consid-
er all of what I just said means
that you win,” Barnhart told
the audience, to enthusiastic
applause.
Farmers, ranchers and for-
estland owners at the hearing
emphasized that natural re-
source industries were already
highly uncertain due to the
weather and volatile markets.
Landowners said they
shouldn’t also have to contend
with the possibility their prop-
erty taxes may rise dramati-
cally every six years, which
is the period of sunset review
established under HB 2859.
“In the orchard business,
we need to plan long-term,”
said Bruce Chapin, a hazelnut
producer near Keizer, Ore.
Marsha Carr, a forestland
owner near Monroe, Ore.,
said her annual property tax-
es would increase from about
$1,000 to more than $25,000
under HB 2859.
Carr said her family har-
vests timber in small patches
of five to seven acres, which
preserves habitat for wildlife
and songbirds.
“That would have to
change to pay the taxes,” she
said. “We would have to cut
larger areas.”
Farmers rely on special-
ized equipment but they often
operate it for only a month
or less per year, unlike other
industries where machinery
creates revenues year-round,
said Roger Beyer, a lobbyist
for the Western Equipment
Dealers Association and sev-
eral crop organizations.
If property taxes were im-
posed on farm machinery, it
would destroy demand for
machinery, he said. “It would
simply dry up and go away.”
Landowners also testified
that property would unfairly
be taxed at the maximum as-
sessed value if the farm use
assessment was allowed to
expire.