Friday, March 8, 2019
CapitalPress.com
Landmark ruling issued in Oregon landfill dispute
Oregon Supreme Court clarifies
test for non-farm development
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Negative impacts from
non-farm developments can’t
be offset by making pay-
ments to surrounding farm-
ers, according to the Oregon
Supreme Court.
The state’s highest court
has also concluded that such
developments can’t signifi-
cantly change agricultural
practices or costs for indi-
vidual growers in “exclusive
farm use” zones.
A longstanding legal bat-
tle over a planned landfill
expansion in Yamhill County
has led to the landmark rul-
ing, which requires such
developments to be analyzed
“practice by practice and
farm by farm.”
The decision has deter-
mined that it’s not enough for
such developments to avoid
reducing the “overall supply
of agricultural land” — they
must also refrain from dis-
rupting “particular farms and
farming practices.”
In 2017, the Oregon Court
of Appeals found that the
Riverbend Landfill’s expan-
sion is permissible under
state land use law because it
doesn’t “decrease the supply
of agricultural land, the prof-
itability of the farm or the
provision of food.”
The Court of Appeals
also held that Yamhill Coun-
ty’s “conditions of approval”
for the landfill expansion —
such as payments for litter
cleanup and damaged fruit
crops — were sufficient to
prevent significant changes
to agriculture.
The Oregon Supreme
Court has now reversed that
opinion and adopted an inter-
pretation of land use law sup-
ported by local opponents
of the landfill, as well as the
Oregon Farm Bureau and the
1,000 Friends of Oregon con-
servation group.
If a non-farm develop-
ment results in the “inability
of the farmer to engage in an
accepted farming practice,”
simply paying him for the
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press File
Ramsey McPhillips, a farmer near McMinnville, Ore.,
discusses the impacts of a nearby landfill on his
property. A landmark ruling in a lawsuit over the
landfill’s expansion was recently issued by the Oregon
Supreme Court.
adverse effect “contravenes
the legislature’s long-term
policy of preserving agricul-
tural land,” the state’s highest
court said.
The ruling upholds Ore-
gon’s land use goal of pre-
serving large blocks of farm-
land that are necessary for
the healthy functioning of the
agricultural economy, said
Ramsey McPhillips, an adja-
cent farmer who opposes the
landfill expansion.
“This isn’t just about
McPhillips Farm, it’s about
all the farmland in Oregon
being encroached on by non-
farm entities who could just
pay off their trespass,” he
said.
Under
the
Oregon
Supreme Court’s ruling,
opponents can seek to block
non-farm developments for
causing significant impacts to
the “individual farmer,” said
Meriel Darzen, rural lands
attorney for 1,000 Friends of
Oregon.
“They don’t have to show
there will be a decrease in the
Tree fruit plant fire causes millions in losses
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
PESHASTIN, Wash. —
Two days after a fire broke
out in a fruit warehouse in
this community 19 miles
northwest of Wenatchee,
a pall of smoke lingered
over the town and people
wore respiratory masks or
scarves outside.
Portions of a blackened
roof hung above a corner
of rubble still burning while
icicles clung to unburned
roofing just a few feet away.
The fire at Blue Bird
Inc., a fruit cooperative,
was reported at 7:06 p.m.
Sunday. Firefighters arrived
to find the west end of a
35,000-square-foot ware-
house on fire. Through
the night, firefighters from
four fire districts fought
the blaze in single-digit
temperatures. They lost
the warehouse but saved
adjoining warehouses and
the packing plant contain-
ing two pear and one apple
packing line.
“We couldn’t have asked
for anything more from
the firefighters. We’re truly
grateful for their efforts
through the night and into
the next day,” said Ron
Gonsalves, Blue Bird gen-
eral manager.
The threat to other
buildings continued into
Monday.
“There’s only 80 feet
between the building that
was on fire and our main
packing building. It was an
extreme effort. Firefighters
saved the whole campus,”
Gonsalves said.
There were no injuries.
The cause is under inves-
tigation. Gonsalves said
there’s no indication of
anything suspicious or of
mechanical failure.
The warehouse that
land supply,” she said.
This test is employed by
county governments when-
ever they encounter condi-
tional use permit applications
for non-farm developments
in “exclusive farm use
zones,” Darzen said.
“The way the standard is
applied is really important.
It’s how farmers can protect
their farm uses from impact,”
she said. “The standard is
applied more often than
almost anything in land use.”
The Oregon Supreme
Court’s decision is “very
instructive” and sets a “high
bar” for non-farm develop-
ment, re-emphasizing the
farmland preservation poli-
cies enacted by Oregon law-
makers, said Tim Bernasek,
an attorney who represented
the Oregon Farm Bureau in
the case.
“They have to apply it on a
farm-by-farm basis,” he said.
“It needs to be a much more
specific analysis regarding
the concerns that are raised.”
Waste Management, the
owner of the Riverbend
Landfill, is reviewing the
Oregon Supreme Court’s
ruling, said Jackie Lang, the
company’s senior area man-
ager for public affairs and
Photos by Dan Wheat/Capital Press
burned was built in 1982 and
contained about 300,000,
44-pound box equivalents
of packed d’Anjou pears
valued at about $8 million,
Gonsalves said.
The average asking
price of premium d’ Anjou
pears in Wenatchee and
Yakima was $17 to $25
per box, depending on size,
on March 4, according to
USDA.
The fruit was in 10 of 12
controlled-atmosphere stor-
age rooms and was late-
term, meaning it was sched-
uled for sales from early
April to July. It was about
one-third of Blue Bird’s
total d’Anjou crop, Gon-
salves said.
The cooperative packs
just under 3 million boxes
of pears and apples and 1
million, 20-pound boxes of
cherries annually, he said.
There was smoke and
water damage to apples and
pears in an adjoining ware-
house, he said.
The building and fruit
Workers inspect a wall at one end while flames
still burn at the other of a Blue Bird warehouse in
Peshastin, Wash., the morning of March 5. The fire
started the evening of March 3.
were fully insured so grow-
ers will be made whole,
Gonsalves said. It will be
rebuilt in time for harvest
starting in August, he said.
The cooperative has 205
grower-members.
Packing has been dis-
rupted for a few days but
will resume soon, he said.
A June 28, 2015, wild-
fire, driven by wind into
Wenatchee,
destroyed
110,000-square-feet
of
Blue Bird facilities there
containing three cherry
packing lines and an
organic apple line. The $53
million loss was fully cov-
ered by insurance with no
expense to grower-mem-
bers, Gonsalves said. The
facility was rebuilt the next
year.
The cooperative, and its
Washington Cherry Grow-
ers division, have pack-
ing and storage facilities in
Wenatchee and Peshastin.
It also owns fruit stor-
age warehouses in Tonas-
ket and George. The fruit is
sold through Domex Super-
fresh Growers in Yakima.
communications.
The expansion plan was
shaped by public input over
eight years, during which the
project was “thoroughly vet-
ted and scrutinized,” Lang
said in an email.
“The final plan was
approved by Yamhill County
after an open and transpar-
ent process that included
more than 25 public meet-
ings,” she said. “Waste Man-
agement has approached this
process with a steady com-
mitment to being a strong
local employer and commu-
nity partner.”
The Supreme Court’s rul-
ing doesn’t block the expan-
sion from moving forward
but rather remands the deci-
sion to the state’s Land Use
Board of Appeals, which
reviews such conditional use
permit decisions.
McPhillips said he’s opti-
mistic the new composition
of Yamhill County’s board
of commissioners will yield
a different result from past
approvals.
“When it comes back to
the county, there’s a farmer
on the commission who
understands the importance
of preserving large sections
of farmland,” he said.
Senate budget committee OKs
H-2A fees on Wash. farmers
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Fire still burns in a corner of a Blue Bird fruit storage warehouse in Peshastin, Wash.,
March 5, while icicles hang from unburned roofing. The fire was first reported March 3.
OLYMPIA — The Sen-
ate Ways and Means Com-
mittee has endorsed new
fees for Washington farm-
ers who hire H-2A foreign
guestworkers, passing a bill
that has drawn more vocal
opposition from agriculture
than any other legislation
this session.
The
Democratic-con-
trolled committee approved
Senate Bill 5438 on a par-
ty-line vote, recommend-
ing its adoption by the full
Senate.
The bill authorizes the
Employment
Security
Department to begin col-
lecting within two years up
to $75 per H-2A worker and
an application fee of up to
$500.
Democrats
rejected
Republican-sponsored
amendments to eliminate
the application fee or cap it
at $25.
The bill stems from a
proposal by the employ-
ment department to col-
lect $2 million a year for a
new 14-employee “Office
of the State Monitor Advo-
cate.” The department orig-
inally proposed last fall to
go beyond what it has done
in the past to ensure foreign
workers aren’t abused.
Since then, the depart-
ment has shifted its empha-
sis, arguing it just needs
more money to do what the
federal government expects
it to do.
The department says it
receives about $300,000 a
year from the U.S. Depart-
ment of Labor for tasks such
as inspecting farms, investi-
gating complaints, survey-
ing wages and verifying U.S.
workers aren’t available.
The federal funding has
been flat, while the work-
load has increased, accord-
ing to the department. The
department projects Wash-
ington farms will hire about
30,000 H-2A workers this
year, almost 6,000 more
than last year.
Labor groups and activ-
ists continue to say the
employment
department
needs more money to curb
abuses.
At a hearing Tuesday,
Community to Commu-
nity Development organizer
Edgar Franks told the com-
mittee that more state over-
sight would head off labor
lawsuits against farms.
“We need adequate over-
sight and monitoring from
our state agencies to ensure
workers are treated fairly
and growers get their fruits
and vegetables picked,” he
said.
At the same hearing,
farmers defended their
industry.
John Huibregtse, chief
financial officer of Sund-
quist Fruit in Yakima, said
the farm gets most of its
H-2A workers from the
Mexican state of Durango.
They are not a captive work-
force, he said.
“Our experience in our
seven years in the program
(is that) nearly all of our
H-2A workers return to us
every single year,” he said.
“And they have lists of their
friends they bring to us to
get into the program.”
The Senate commit-
tee amended the bill to rein
in the employment depart-
ment’s original ambition.
Fees would have to be
spent on what the depart-
ment does now, rather than
the “additional work” the
department envisioned in its
proposal to the governor’s
office last fall.
Research underway to study fire behavior
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
CORVALLIS, Ore. —
Researchers are working
to better understand how
large wildfires behave on the
landscape.
Last year, firefighters
battled 2,019 blazes across
Oregon, burning more than
1,400 square miles — an
area larger than Rhode
Island. Another 1,744 fires
burned approximately 685
square miles in Washing-
ton, according to the North-
west Interagency Coordina-
tion Center.
As fires grow in size, the
U.S. Department of Defense
is funding a four-year, $2.1
million project through the
agency’s Strategic Environ-
mental Research Develop-
ment Program to study the
burning of live trees. David
Blunck, an assistant profes-
sor of mechanical engineer-
ing at Oregon State Univer-
sity who was chosen to lead
the team.
“Live fuels are basically
trees that are green and liv-
ing,” Blunck said. “These
trees are often what torches,
but historically, dead fuels
have primarily been studied.”
Studying live fuels is
a newer area of wildfire
research, Blunck said. In the
past, research has focused
mostly on burning charac-
teristics of a single species at
a specific time of year. The
challenge for fire manag-
ers is predicting how blazes
will interact with a new fuel,
in terms of ignition and
burning.
“We have a finite number
of live fuels we’ve tested,”
Blunck said. “Do you create
a different model for each
fuel? If I can create a model
that’s predictive over a wide
number of live fuels ... that
model would be a lot more
advantageous.”
To achieve that model,
Blunck theorizes that just
a handful of processes
cause differences in burn-
ing behavior when live fuels
burn — including tempera-
ture and flammable gases
given off by different trees.
If researchers can under-
stand what those are, they
can better predict how new
species will burn, Blunck
said.
Oregon State Univer-
sity will collaborate with
the Forest Service on field
work during controlled
burns later this year. Lab-
oratory samples will also
be analyzed, burning pen-
cil-sized tree limbs and
shining lasers to determine
which gases are given off.
Blunck is also wrapping
up another three-year study
looking at how the live trees
spread embers when they
are engulfed in flames.
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