STORY AND PHOTOS BY EVA SYLWESTER
In Hot Water
Over Graywater
Popular Dharmalaya runs afoul of city codes
R
ichard Heinberg, a well-known
researcher from New College of
California, was introduced by the
mayor of Eugene when he spoke to hun-
dreds of people about peak oil at the
Eugene Hilton in January 2006. After his
speech, he did not retire to one of the many
bedrooms available on site. Instead, he
crashed on the couch at Dharmalaya, a
yoga studio in north Eugene that is now in
trouble for violating land use codes and
building without proper permits.
In 2002, Michele Renee and Ron Logan
(known to students as Acharya Ravi) ac-
quired a lot at 356 Horn Lane that would
have been big enough to hold a five-house
subdivision. Instead, they used it to build
Dharmalaya, which has hosted educational
workshops, concerts and various commu-
nity events in its River Road neighborhood
in addition to its primary purpose as a yoga
and meditation studio.
The main structure bears the handprints
of some of the 250-plus volunteers who
helped with construction. To minimize the
impact on the environment, Dharmalaya
was built as much as possible with local
materials. The surrounding yard has many
kinds of fruit trees and has attracted a
greater variety of wild birds and animals
than was previously present.
“People come and they feel this sense
of wholesome abundance,” Logan said.
“You can see why it became popular. Now
it’s come to a place where the popularity is
in jeopardy.”
Trouble began when an anonymous
complaint was made to the city of Eugene
regarding construction without a permit
and improper land use for a residential
neighborhood.
Because of the high level of use, which
came to include overnight guests, Logan
and Renee had built a bathhouse for
Dharmalaya. The bathhouse includes three
composting toilets and two showers with a
graywater system. The system pumps used
water from the showers through the root
systems of marsh plants, where microbes
purify the water. The water then drains into
a backyard pond.
“We understood there would not be pro-
visions in the building code for that, so we
made the difficult choice to build it without
seeking a building permit,” Logan said.
Mike McKerrow, land use management
supervisor for the city of Eugene, said the
city reviewed the complaint in August
2006 and then inspected the property. They
asked Renee and Logan to submit a zoning
verification letter describing uses of the
property. After city employees received the
letter in October, they determined that
Dharmalaya was, within the language of
zoning ordinances, most similar to a neigh-
borhood activity center and requires a con-
ditional use permit to operate in its residen-
tial neighborhood.
“It would be a lot less work, but I can’t
imagine this being a private residence,”
Renee said. “It doesn’t feel like it belongs
to us. Hopefully it will be able to live out
its dharma and its destiny.”
Some business operations, such as soft-
ware designers working from home, are al-
lowed in residential neighborhoods, but
those are limited to operations that do not
create traffic or require off-street parking,
McKerrow added.
“They’ve had about 7,000 visitors over
the past four years,” McKerrow said. “That
kind of exceeds the home occupation stan-
dard.”
Currently, the center is identified as in
violation of city codes.
“It was illegal for Richard Heinberg to
be here sleeping on this couch,” Logan
said.
Aside from running Dharmalaya,
Renee works as a substitute teacher in
Eugene public schools, and Logan has
some income from teaching meditation.
However, they said the cost of the permits
exceeds their annual income.
The cost of the building permit is un-
known, and fees double for retroactive
building permits. The conditional use per-
mit would cost $16,797 given the prop-
erty’s current status as an unincorporated
area of Lane County. If the owners chose to
‘It doesn’t
be a public hearing on the issue where
community members can share their opin-
ions with the city.
“Yes, we didn’t go through the
processes that are set up by society for con-
struction,” Logan said. “The reason was
not that we wanted to avoid building per-
mit fees or to get away with building a
structure that was not well designed. …
The reason it happened was that we feel we
are trying to design to a higher standard
than is in the Oregon building code.”
He added that while the building code
monitors the height of stair steps and the
spacing of fence slats to avoid accidents, it
ignores bigger issues such as building with
materials that contain harmful chemicals
and use large amounts of fossil fuels to be
produced and shipped to their destinations.
Robert Bolman, founding director of
Maitreya Ecovillage in Eugene, helped
with the construction of Dharmalaya,
which he described as “a fixture in the
community that countless hundreds of peo-
ple absolutely adore and value and cher-
ish.” He said one difficulty that operations
like Dharmalaya and Maitreya often face
in dealing with building codes is that they
are forced to provide off-street parking for
cars, even though the people using their
buildings may try to minimize their use of
cars.
“The space off the street should be gar-
dens and places for children to play, not au-
tomobile storage,” Bolman said.
Bolman said Maitreya has a small
amount of graywater purification on site,
but that it’s not as well done or ambitious
as the system at Dharmalaya.
“Dharmalaya is doing a really, really
good job of trying to do the sort of thing
that should be done,” Bolman said. “They
Dharmalaya founders
Michele Renee and Ron Logan
feel like it
belongs to us.
Hopefully it
will be able to
live out its
dharma
and its
destiny .’
—Michele Renee
become incorporated by the city of
Eugene, which they are considering, they
would pay $6,000, plus a $1,600 annexa-
tion fee and increased taxes. Additional ex-
penses include consulting fees and possi-
bly a traffic impact analysis, Renee and
Logan said.
Donations from supporters as far away
as Finland have helped Dharmalaya deal
with its funding problems. A Feb. 3 benefit
event at the Fenario Gallery in downtown
Eugene raised a total of about $2,000, in-
cluding some donations made before and
after the event, and Renee said there would
be a second benefit event at the Fenario
Gallery on May 5.
Logan said there would also eventually
should not be punished for it.”
McKerrow said the city is working with
Dharmalaya on the issue and making sure
Renee and Logan are aware of all their op-
tions for going through the process of ap-
plying for a conditional use permit.
“We’re really hoping to receive an ap-
plication soon so we can get that process
started,” McKerrow said.
Renee and Logan feel that the city is
supportive of their concerns but con-
strained by the regulations of the state of
Oregon. They emphasized that their inter-
actions with city employees have been
positive.
“We’d love to have them for neigh-
bors,” Logan said.
ew
MARCH 15, 2007 13