Originally published August 30 2005
Oregon farmers look for ways to save farmland
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A task force will be appointed to find ways to close the growing rift in Oregon's statewide land use program, in an effort to stop urban sprawl and preserve farmland.
Way back in 1973, a bunch of Oregonians got together with a common goal: save farmland and stop urban sprawl.
These visionary individuals created Senate Bill 100, the most effective and resilient land-use program in the United States.
The program's No. 1 goal was citizen involvement, and thousands of Oregonians helped cities, counties and the state design and implement the land-use rules.
For all the good that law did, it never escaped its persistent foes.
Legislature after Legislature fended off attempts to emasculate the land-use program.
Last fall, it was the people who surrendered.
The measure places local and state governments in a bind: Either allow many property owners to do whatever they wish with their land or pay them not to.
Before court cases and civic inaction destroy the land-use program, the task force must recommend how to restructure it and make it relevant to contemporary life.
Like the legendary Republican Tom McCall, Kulongoski is equally at home in the small towns and deserts of Eastern Oregon and the urban centers and coastal towns of Western Oregon.
Working with Republicans and Democrats, McCall prodded the 1973 Legislature into protecting both the environment and the economy.
In his opening address to that Legislature, McCall said, "There is a shameless threat to our environment and to the whole quality of life, an unfettered despoiling of the land.
Sagebrush subdivisions, coastal 'condomania,' and the ravenous rampage of suburbia in the Willamette Valley all threaten to mock Oregon's status as the environmental model for the nation.
We are dismayed that we have not stopped misuse of the land, our most valuable finite natural resource."
Seemingly thoughtful regulations wound up allowing development on some prime farmland instead of steering housing to low-value hillsides.
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