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Friday, May 27, 2022
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Washington state’s solar steamroller
A
cross the nation, farm or-
ganizations, conservation
groups and others are working
overtime to preserve agricultural land.
It is a necessity if we as a nation are to
maintain our food independence and
help feed 8 billion hungry souls around
the world.
These efforts take many forms. Some
are state agencies. Others are private
nonprofits. Together, they represent a
thin line between developers, many of
whom view farmland as “shovel-ready”
for the next restaurant, strip mall or
other commercial development, and a
healthy agricultural economy.
It is a heavy lift. Developers equipped
with a sharp pencil and a big wallet can
make an impossible-to-refuse offer to
farmers and ranchers who might be con-
sidering retirement but don’t have a next
generation interested in taking over the
farm.
One option is for the farmer to sell
his land to developers. It is a straightfor-
ward transaction but spells the death of
another farm.
Another option is to “cash out” the
development value of the land. Farmers
Getty Images
An aerial view of a field of solar panels
in farmland.
can work with an agency or nonprofit
and sell a conservation easement that
protects the farmland and takes the pos-
sibility of development off the table.
The farm survives forever, and the
farmer is able to retire or recapitalize his
or her operation with proceeds from the
easement sale.
In many Western states, solar devel-
opments are a pressing development
threat to farms and ranches. Solar farms
continue to be built covering thousands
of acres, much of it arable farmland.
One example is in Benton County,
Wash., where a Canadian company
wants to build a 3,000-acre solar farm
— all on agricultural land. About 750
acres of it is irrigated.
Our understanding of solar and wind
farms is they were supposed to be built
on land unsuitable for farming or ranch-
ing and have no water available. That
being the case, why is irrigated farmland
now being sacrificed to the solar gods?
In Washington, the state government
has given the Energy Facility Site Eval-
uation Council a superpower. It can
override county and local governments
that have laws or policies protecting
farmland.
In the case of Benton County, the
county commission passed an ordinance
late last year prohibiting anyone from
building solar or wind farms on land
zoned for agriculture.
But the state site evaluation coun-
cil, which answers to Gov. Jay Inslee, an
alternative energy zealot, can approve
the solar development despite the coun-
ty’s ordinance.
So much for local control.
We worry that the people of Ben-
ton County — and other counties across
Washington state — will be similarly
steamrolled as the governor and others
push to get these solar projects built.
We also worry that agriculture, which
ODF’s proposed WUI
rules need to be sent back
to the drawing board
Our View
T
Getty Images
The State of Oregon changed its goals for managing forests.
Timber accord the best deal
industry could likely get
Time will tell the length of ‘regulatory certainty’
O
regon Gov. Kate Brown has signed
legislation that makes the Private
Forest Accord — a deal reached be-
tween the timber industry and environmental
groups — the law in the Beaver State.
We understand why many segments of the
timber industry have embraced the forest man-
agement framework spelled out in the accord.
Only time will tell whether it will provide the
regulatory certainty that it promises.
Representatives of timber and environmen-
tal groups struck the deal last year after a year of
talks mediated by the Governor’s Office. Brown
convened the panel in 2020 to avoid competing
ballot measures on forestry regulations.
The legislation codifying the accord expands
no-harvest buffers around streams, implements
stricter requirements for road-building, priori-
tizes non-lethal control of beavers and creates a
new modeling system to avoid and mitigate the
effects of landslides.
The legislation is expected to set the stage
for a federal Habitat Conservation Plan for the
state’s private forests, which would shield land-
owners from liability under the Endangered
Species Act when harvesting trees. That would
be a huge benefit to private timber owners.
Support for the deal is not unanimous in the
timber industry — critics argue that it compli-
cates forest management, excludes excessive
amounts of land from logging and was devel-
oped without sufficient transparency and pub-
provides food and fiber to Washingto-
nians and others around the globe, will
be crippled if arable farmland continues
to be taken out of production.
Interestingly, Washington also has
an Office of Farmland Preservation
within the state Conservation Com-
mission. According to its website, the
office “works to address the rapid loss
of working farm and forest lands in our
state.”
Other state departments have also run
afoul of the solar steamroller. The Wash-
ington Department of Fish and Wild-
life is trying to stop a solar farm planned
for an area near the largest population of
greater sage grouse in the state. These
birds are the focus of concerted efforts
around the West. Farmers, ranchers,
government agencies and others have
worked tirelessly to protect the birds in
an effort to stabilize their populations.
We wish these agencies, nonprof-
its and organizations luck as they try to
protect the land that feeds America and
the world.
We all need food — three times a
day, in fact — far more than we need
solar panels and wind turbines blotting
out massive swaths of farmland.
lic input. Some owners of smaller timber parcels
could lose logging on up to half their land.
But several forest product companies and the
Oregon Small Woodlands Association signed
onto the Private Forest Accord with the under-
standing that it would provide more regulatory
certainty and reduce the likelihood of disruptive
lawsuits and ballot initiatives.
“There are no certainties in life, but we have
a negotiated agreement that’s supported by all
sides,” said Eric Geyer, strategic business devel-
opment director for Roseburg Forest Products.
“I’m confident we will have regulatory certainty
for the elements that were negotiated.”
Detractors in the timber industry view “regu-
latory certainty” as unrealistically optimistic.
They might be right.
Certainly, the timber industry will be held to
the letter of the law and the rules that are devel-
oped. We are willing to accept that the environ-
mental groups that are parties to the accord will
make a good-faith effort to live up to the spirit
of the deal, but they are under no legal obliga-
tion to be satisfied with the new framework.
And what of non-signatories to the accord
who might try to get more restrictions on the
ballot, or the next legislature that wants to fur-
ther tighten the rules?
As Eric Geyer said, there are no certain-
ties. The accord probably was the best deal the
industry was going to get.
We hope that it lasts.
he Oregon Department
of Forestry (ODF) has
had an open comment
period since March 29 per-
taining to new definitions of
the Wildland-Urban Interface
(WUI) in Oregon Administra-
tive Rules section 629.
These rules will soon go
before the Oregon Board of
Forestry at its June 8 meet-
ing. These definitions are being
updated as a result of Senate
Bill 762 (SB762) from Ore-
gon’s 2021 legislative session,
and include mapping criteria
for WUI identification.
As a sheep farmer, timber
owner and former professional
wildland firefighter, the pro-
posed new language is of con-
cern to me for several reasons:
The first is that the proposed
new language includes any-
thing 400 square feet or greater
when considering buildings
defined as “structures” in the
rule, irrespective of the build-
ing’s use. While I understand
that the ODF has provided ver-
bal assurance that the term
“structures” will not be inter-
preted to include structures out-
side occupied buildings for
regulation purposes, assur-
ances often only last as long as
the agency personnel who pro-
vided them. When the Oregon
Legislature enacted SB762 its
focus was on preserving lives
and the residences of the peo-
ple of our state.
The new definitions will
also create a density standard
of one structure per 40 acres
for inclusion in WUI areas. The
previous interpretation of WUI
from SB360/Oregon Forest-
land-Urban Interface Fire Pro-
tection Act used 4 homes per
40 acres as the threshold for
inclusion in the WUI. This was
consistent with Oregon’s Rural
Residential zoning of one
home per 10 acres. While the
new rules will aggregate struc-
tures on a given parcel (making
them count as one for the pur-
pose of WUI identification), it
would include a shop, barn or
hay shed in a WUI area even if
there were no residence on that
piece of land. These two crite-
ria of themselves set the stage
for a wide net of regulatory
authority in all Western Oregon
and many parts of Central and
Eastern Oregon.
Additionally, I am con-
cerned that croplands will be
considered part of “vegeta-
tive fuels,” which the new lan-
guage defines as a plant that
constitutes a wildfire hazard,
potentially requiring crops be
removed for wildfire risk mit-
igation where they meet farm
GUEST
VIEW
Matthew
Brady
homes and infrastructure, if in
“high” or “extreme” risk classi-
fied zones in the new rules.
I have pastures within
30 feet of my residence that
would fall under the definition
of “vegetative fuels” as pro-
posed in this rule making. All
the vegetation in my pastures
has value as feed for my sheep,
and any fuel mitigation require-
ments for removing hazards
as a result of this rule will be
an undue burden on my live-
lihood. I do not believe that
the legislature or ODF intend
this result, but it would be eas-
ily allowed under the defini-
tions and mapping proposed.
This new definition of “vegeta-
tive fuels” should exclude cul-
tivated crop lands and range-
lands in active production.
There are several other
concerns that I have with the
new rules proposed by ODF
which space does not allow
me to elaborate on, including
an incomplete understanding
of how classified forestlands
are utilized across the state, an
incomplete concept of wildfire
fuels in the rules, a new sys-
tem of classifying wildfire risk
categories, and the fact that the
WUI definitions set forth in
this new language will be uti-
lized in areas outside of ODF’s
jurisdiction by the Office of the
State Fire Marshal.
I encourage you to read
the proposed rules for your-
self. They can be found on the
Oregon Department of Forest-
ry’s website under the “About
ODF” tab, where you will then
see “Senate Bill 762.”
While trying to make a liv-
ing with and fighting wild-
fires in Oregon safer and more
holistic is a laudable endeavor,
I believe that ODF is widely
missing the mark with these
new rules and failing to con-
sider the diversity of the fire
landscape in Oregon. I hope
that the Board of Forestry sends
them back to the drawing board.
Matthew Brady is a sheep,
timber, hay and pumpkin
farmer in Azalea, Ore. He
worked for 21 years as a wild-
land firefighter for the Douglas
Forest Protective Association
in Douglas County and serves
as the representative of Doug-
las and Lane counties on Ore-
gon Farm Bureau’s Board of
Directors.