Lane County is convening a stakeholders group with the objective of revising the county’s comprehensive plan and development code to address the burning issues of the 21st century: how to best ensure cleaner, healthier, safer, and more prosperous communities in a world increasingly threatened by energy shortfalls and a warming climate.

Here’s the text of an email sent out by Planning Director Kent Howe:

All,

As part of the citizen involvement process for Lane County’s Long Range Planning Program, you have volunteered to participate in the Lane County Stakeholder Group that will be reviewing potential revisions to land use policies and regulations.

The Lane County Board of Commissioners has directed Land Management Division staff to facilitate this group process.

The first meeting of the Stakeholder’s Group is Thursday, February 25th, 6:00pm, Harris Hall, 125 E. 8th Ave, Eugene.

At the Feb 17, 2010, meeting the Board specified the Stakeholder Group review the first 6 policy issues in the Goal One Code Amendment Proposal, attached. These correspond to lines 1-24 on the Preliminary List of Code Amendments spread sheet, also attached.

We look forward to working with you. If you have any questions, please give me a call.

Thanks,

Kent Howe
Planning Director
Lane County
541-682-3734

The text of the amendments proposed by Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County is available here.

So all of you Lane County folks who are concerned about figuring out a way to strong local economies that will be resilient enough to grapple with the challenges we are already beginning to face, here’s your chance to take on the developers who normally have their way.

See you Thursday!

Micronesia is forging new precedent in global environmental law by claiming it is adversely affected by a Czech coal-fired power plant and thus entitled to relief under Czech law.

Micronesia filed a plea with the Czech environment ministry using a measure designed originally to settle disputes between near neighbors, arguing:

The Federated States of Micronesia is seriously endangered by the impacts of climate change, including the flooding of its entire territory and the eventual disappearance of a portion of its state. . . . The commissioning or retrofit of any large coal power plant could play a relevant role in the destruction of the entire environment of our state.

It may be too late for Micronesia. A new study suggests that Antarctica’s Pine Island glacier has passed its tipping point and is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimeters.

Pine Island glacier is but one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Climate change is warming the Amundsen Sea, which is at the southern margin of the Pacific Ocean. As rising sea levels push the warm water beneath the ice shelves, it melts them from below, pushing the grounding line higher up the continental shelf.

By raising sea levels, and therefore the grounding line, in their model, the scientists identified a point of no return beyond which the glacier would be unable to recover.

The Antarctic sea bed has a small lip in it: it rises slowly up the continental shelf, then makes a slight dip before rising again to the shoreline. The researchers found that as long as the grounding line is on the outer rise of the sea bed, before the lip, small changes in climate lead to correspondingly small changes in the glacier’s ice volume. But as soon as the grounding line moves over the lip and starts to move down into the dip in the sea bed, the situation changes critically. Once the grounding line passes the crest, a small change in the climate causes a rapid and irreversible loss of ice.

News isn’t good from the other pole, either. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley,  predict that replacing tundra with trees will melt sea ice and greatly enhance warming over the entire Arctic region.

Because trees are darker than the bare tundra, scientists previously have thought that the northward expansion of trees would result in more absorption of sunlight and a consequent local warming.

During past episodes of warming, broad-leaved deciduous trees expanded their range north even more quickly than needle-leaved trees. While not not as dark as evergreen trees, broad-leaved trees transpire a lot more water. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas that becomes well-mixed throughout the Arctic.

Taking account of this in a standard model of global warming, the researchers discovered that, while broad-leaved trees do absorb some additional sunlight, the water vapor they pump into the atmosphere causes a more widespread warming.

The increased water vapor would melt more sea ice, resulting in more absorption of sunlight by the open ocean and dumping more water vapor into the atmosphere. This positive feedback will warm the land even more and encourage faster, more efficient tree growth and perhaps an even faster expansion of trees into the Arctic.

California’s new carbon fuel standard will shut U.S. ethanol out of the biggest U.S. market. Why? Because the regulations will count the emissions created when corn is planted, harvested and ground into fuel as part of ethanol’s carbon output. The regulation also counts indirect land-use changes – the impact on other areas of planting corn in the Midwest for ethanol.

Naturally, the two largest ethanol trade organizations have sued California over the standard.

When you count everything, “green” may not be green after all.

A prime example is the newly rolled out “Greenroads” rating system developed by University of Washington researchers and the engineering firm CH2M Hill. The system (the complete version of which is available here) outlines minimum requirements to qualify as a “green roadway”, including a noise mitigation plan, storm-water management plan and waste management plan. It also allows up to 118 points for voluntary actions such as minimizing light pollution, using recycled materials, incorporating quiet pavement and accommodating non-motorized transportation.

What the rating system leaves out is everything important:

Decisions regarding the location, type, timing, feasibility or other planning level ideas are excluded. While planning is fundamental to roadway and community
sustainability, these decisions are often too complex or political to be adequately defined by a point system.

“Greenroads” is greenwashing at its finest.

Lane County will at long last be reviewing and approving property line adjustments.

That’s the effect of amendments to Lane Code Chapter 13 – amendments which have long been pushed for by LandWatch Lane County and Goal One Coalition.

The Lane County Board of Commissioners approved the revisions by a unanimous 5-0 vote at its afternoon meeting on Wednesday, December 9.

Lane County’s historic “hands off” approach to property line adjustments has long allowed for developers to find tiny “lots”, often created when road construction sliced through properties, leaving new “lots” on each side. Speculators buy up the land; reconfigure the property lines by simply recording deeds; obtain “legal lot verifications” for the reconfigured properties; and then sell off the developable parcels at a hefty profit. All this happened without public notice, any opportunity for public comment or participation, adequate county review, or any way to challenge the result.

A Court of Appeals decision (Phillips v. Polk County) and the passage of two bills in the 2007 and 2008 legislative sessions ( HB 2723, dealing with retroactive unit of land validations; and HB 3629, dealing with property line adjustments) made it obvious to everyone – including the development community – that Lane County’s practices failed to comply with state law, putting Lane County property owners in an untenable position.

In the spring of 2009, the Board of Commissioners directed the Land Management Division (LMD) to initiate the post-acknowledgment plan amendment (PAPA) process to adopt the code changes drafted by LandWatch and Goal One Coalition. Following a joint public hearing before the Board and Planning Commission, the Board directed LMD to call together a work group composed of land use advocates, surveyors, and the development community to see if a consensus proposal could be achieved. The Planning Commission recommended approval of the draft resulting from that effort, and with formal Board approval the new provisions will now become the law of the land.

At “work group” meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, land use advocates and developers reached accord on proposed changes to Lane Code chapters 13 and 14.

Adoption of the Chapter 13 amendments would mean that Lane County would at last review and approve property line adjustments. The absence of a county review process has led to numerous illegal property line adjustments over past years, creating a legal limbo for property owners; and has allowed developers to reconfigure rural properties into what are in effect rural subdivisions without public notice, public scrutiny, or opportunity for public participation.

The Chapter 14 amendments would streamline Lane County’s land use decision-making process and would provide a means to bypass the exorbitantly expensive process for appealing a hearings official decision to the Board of Commissioners. The expense of the process has effectively insulated hearings official decisions from review.

The historic agreement was prompted by the new lineup on the Board of Commissioners. LandWatch Lane County and Goal One Coalition have for several years been pushing for Lane County to regulate property line adjustments and to lower appeal fees so that people are not priced out of the process. Those efforts have included litigation. Also, LandWatch and Goal One drafted code amendments to implement new state law while fixing both the property line adjustments and decision-making process problems.

The development community, together with Lane County’s Land Management Division, stonewalled the proposed reforms for years. But the election of Rob Handy last November resulted in a shakeup in the makeup of the Board of Commissioners, changing the political dynamics. The new progressive majority chose Pete Sorenson to chair the Board. The agenda committee, which has the power to set the county’s priorities, consists of Sorenson and Bill Fleenor. Sorenson and Fleenor, now with the unanimous assent of the rest of the Board, bypassed Land Management and scheduled a joint meeting of the Lane County Planning Commission and the Board of Commissioners to consider the LandWatch/Goal One proposals.

The joint hearing made it clear to everyone that the Board of Commissioners was now determined to adopt the LandWatch/Goal One proposals. In an act of remarkable generosity and accommodation, the Board directed all interested parties to meet to see if a consensus proposal could be crafted. The Board also set dates certain for the Planning Commission to consider the resulting proposal and for the Board to adopt final code amendments.

It was now obvious to the development community that they could obstruct no longer – the Board was determined to act. The developer “group,” under the leadership of ex-commissioner Steve Cornacchia, came to the table with slightly modified proposals that would achieve all of the ends sought by LandWatch and Goal One: property line adjustments would be reviewed by the county for compliance with applicable law in a process open to public participation, and Lane County’s land use decision-making process would be simplified and would allow for appeal to LUBA of a hearings official decision without the necessity of paying over $3,700 to first appeal to the Board of Commissioners.

Written drafts of revisions embodying the agreements in principle are now being prepared. The revised Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 amendments will be posted on the Goal One Institute website as soon as they become available.

LUBA issued its decision in Wetherell redux on Thursday April 30, and on Monday May 4 posted the opinion on its website. The news isn’t good. Farms lands throughout Oregon in agricultural capability classes V-VII are at grave risk.

Recall that Wetherell is the “nonresource lands” case. If land doesn’t fall within the Goal 3 definition of “agricultural land,” it isn’t protected by Goal 3 and thus is “nonresource” land and can be rezoned for development. The Supreme Court decision in Wetherell v. Douglas County in May 2007 threw out LCDC’s administrative rule prohibiting profitability from being considered when identifying agricultural land.

Agricultural lands as defined in Goal 3 include Class I-IV soils in western Oregon (Class I-VI soils in eastern Oregon) and “other lands suitable for farm use.” The applicant in Wetherell argued that the rule’s prohibition on considering profitability was inconsistent with the statutory and Goal 3 definition of “farm use,” defined as the “current employment of land for the primary purpose of obtaining a profit in money.” The Supreme Court agreed, throwing out a ban on considering profitability that had been in law since 1982.

The Supreme Court’s holding opened the door to a property owner arguing that because he couldn’t make a profit, the land wasn’t agricultural land protected by Goal 3 and thus could be used to grow houses. A property owner could hire his own “expert” to prove that he couldn’t make money. Given the legal principles that a local government decision only needs to be supported by “substantial evidence” and a local government has wide discretion to choose which evidence to rely on, it’s now open season on “other lands suitable for farm use.” There are no effective protections left for such lands.

With LUBA’s decision, our greatest fears have been realized. While conceding that economic analyses are “highly manipulable, and can yield dramatically different results depending on what variables are assumed and what approaches are used” [and what outcomes are desired!], LUBA held that the report prepared by the property owner’s expert was enough to support the county’s conclusion that the land couldn’t be farmed for a profit, wasn’t “suitable for farm use,” and therefore wasn’t agricultural land.

This, despite the fact that the land had been used for over 70 years and that a neighboring farmer was offering to lease it and use it as part of his farm operation.

It seems LUBA was understandably unwilling to stick its neck out and get sideways with the Supreme Court. Any “fix” of the Supreme Court’s decision will have to come from the legislature.

There are huge swaths of Class V and Class VI soils in western Oregon – in the Willamette Valley, along the coast, and in southern Oregon – lands that have long been used for farming and for hay and pasture. There are over 61,450,000 acres of land in eastern Oregon, 48% in private ownership, a large proportion of which are Class VII soils used for pasture or range, woodland, or wildlife. Until the legislature passes a fix to Wetherell, all of these lands will remain at risk.

Culminating many years of effort, the Lane County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday ordered the Land Management Division to initiate post-amendment plan amendments (PAPAs) to fix problems with the local appeals process and with property line adjustments in Lane County.

Over the last weeks and months LandWatch and Goal One Coalition have been meeting with representatives of the developer community including the Home Builders Association of Lane County to reach consensus agreement on proposed code language. With everybody on board, the new Board of Commissioners under the leadership of Pete Sorenson and Bill Fleenor unanimously agreed that the time to act on the proposals had finally come.

The amendments to Lane Code Chapter 14 would streamline the local appeals process by providing that the initial public hearing before the Hearings Official would be the final county decision unless the Board of Commissioners on its own initiative chose to review the decision. The simplified and expedited process saves time and money for everybody while providing incentives for better decision-making and retaining the power of the Board to set county policy and retain deference on review. The text of the proposed amendments is available here.

The amendments to Lane Code Chapter 13 would for the first time require county review and approval of property line adjustments. The new process would eliminate the cloud of legal uncertainty that surrounds Lane County’s current process of “verifying” property line adjustments post facto through the county’s existing “legal lot” verification process. The new process would better protect property owners’ interests while enhancing the ability of citizens to be involved in the process. The draft proposal also brings the county code into compliance with legislation passed in the 2007 and 2008 sessions. The text of the proposed amendments is available here.

A more thorough explanation of the issues is found at the Goal One Institute website here.

The Big Look bill (HB 2229) on Tuesday passed out of committee to the House floor. The current bill reflects several amendments completed by the House Land Use Committee during its April 23rd work session. Once passed to the House floor, the bill is subject to additional amendments as it continues to progress through the legislature.

There wasn’t much of anything good in the bill to begin with. There’s nothing left in the bill that could be considered either “big” or a “look” at Oregon’s land use planning program.

The Task Force’s proudest accomplishment is the adoption of “overarching principles”:

The four overarching principles guiding the land use program in Oregon are to:
(A) Provide a healthy environment;
(B) Sustain a prosperous economy;
(C) Ensure a desirable quality of life; and
(D) Equitably allocate the benefits and burdens of land use planning.

The bill is crystal clear that these four principles are “aspirational” only – they expressly have no legal impact whatsoever.

Oh, one more thing is notable in the “principles” section:

Additionally, the land use planning program should, but is not required to, help communities achieve sustainable development patterns and manage the effects of climate change.

You read that right – the planning program is not directed to be used as a tool to help us figure out how to live within our energy or other resources or to head off climate change. At most, it “should, but is not required to, figure out how to live with the consequences of climate. That’s the best the Land Use Committee could do to address the most consequential issue of our time (the Task Force didn’t even try). And there’s no hint at all in the bill that we’re facing an impending energy crisis.

The Task Force’s controversial proposal to allow two or more counties to adopt their own definition of farm and forest lands is gone, replaced by new Sections 5 – 7 that allow counties to legislatively revisit their inventories of farm and forest land and redesignate them “nonresource” if they fail to meet the Goal 3 definition of “agricultural lands” or the Goal 4 definition of “forest lands.” Of course, counties can do this already, either legislatively or quasi-judicially.

There’s a long and complicated technical fix to the existing regional problem solving process.

There’s a pretty meaningless provision saying that local governments “should consider directing” infrastructure investments to further compact urban development.

And there’s a “content neutral” review of land use laws and regulations to reduce complexity.

Not much to show for four year’s work.

And a definite failure to come to grips with the extraordinary challenges before us.

Chair Nolan’s admirable and even astounding achievement was to get some bill out of committee while making the folks who were involved in this project feel good about the end result. That was magic.

It looks like the days of the land use “hired gun” – soil and forestry consultants retained by a property owner to swear that his land was good for nothing but growing houses – may be drawing to a close.

HB 2761 passed out of the House Committee on Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Communities this morning on a unanimous vote with a “do pass” recommendation.

The bill would make the experts who do the farm and forest capability analysis answer to DLCD rather than to the property owner seeking to develop his land. If a property owner wanted to rezone his land from farm or forest use to a development designation, he would pay a fee to DLCD and the agency would then contract with an expert from a list of certified and approved soil scientists and other experts. This would ensure that the data relied on is objective and scientific and would eliminate the corruption that is inherent in the current process.

The bill was originally drafted to address only agricultural capability, but was amended to include forest capability as well. Goal One Coalition pushed hard for the scope of the bill to be expanded to address the problem of biased data produced by forestry consultants under pressure to produce the results they’ve been paid to obtain.

Unfortunately the amended version is still not available on the legislature’s website. We’ll post it as soon as we get a copy of the text of the bill as amended.

UPDATE 4/30: The amendments did not get into the House version. The fix is expected to happen in the Senate.

After the “thorough scientific review” ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency today (Friday April 17) issued a proposed finding that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare.

The proposed endangerment finding states:

In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.

The scientific analysis found impacts of climate change include, but are not limited to:

• increased drought
• more heavy downpours and flooding
• more frequent and intense heat waves and wildfires
• greater sea level rise
• more intense storms
• harm to water resources, agriculture, wildlife and ecosystems

The proposed finding also takes into account the disproportionate impact climate change has on the health of certain segments of the population, such as the poor, the very young, the elderly, those already in poor health, the disabled, those living alone and/or indigenous populations dependent on one or a few resources.

In addition to threatening human health, the analysis finds that climate change also has serious national security implications. Escalating violence in destabilized regions can be incited and fomented by an increasing scarcity of resources – including water. This lack of resources, driven by climate change patterns, then drives massive migration to more stabilized regions of the world.

The proposed endangerment finding now enters the public comment period.

The 133 page finding itself and the 171 page “technical support document” can be found on EPA’s website here.