State slams Washington County reserve designations

Clackamas County garners praise from state officials who warn against locking much land

By Christian Gaston

The Forest Grove News-Times, Oct 23, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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When state land use officials presented their take on the region’s reserve process last week, they had a bit of a mixed message.

On the one hand, they liked the building consensus coming out of conversations between Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington Counties and Metro over where the region should grow.

But they didn’t much care for where Washington County would like to set urban reserves.

The county put too much emphasis on wine-producing lands, the officials said. The county seemed to want to set aside wetlands as urban reserves and didn’t set up enough of a buffer between future urban areas and waterways.

“A cursory review by Department of State Lands staff indicates that up to 15 percent of the proposed Washington County urban reserve land is on mapped hydric (wetland) soils,” read a staff report signed by nine state agency heads.

Overall, state officials said Clackamas County’s reserve designation process was the one to follow.

At the same time, the state praised Metro Chief Operating Officer Michael Jordan’s recommendations for the region’s “reserve” lands.

Jordan issued his recommendations for the region’s urban and rural reserve land that will likely be set aside for development in the next 50 years.

However, Jordan’s vision could create some tension among the three counties. Washington County has recommended more than 34,000 acres of land to be set aside for future urban development. Clackamas County has targeted 8,000 acres. Multnomah County is considering a few hundred acres.

And so far, Forest Grove and Cornelius’s hopes to expand north of Council Creek have been met with controversy, with the Washington County Farm Bureau and 1000 Friends of Oregon pitching steep opposition.

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