Left, Right, and Rural: A Case Study in Finding Common Ground

Failing Land and Water Protections Create Common Ground in Rural Oregon

If, like me, you’re on the lookout for places, issues, and causes where Trump and Biden supporters can find common ground in Oregon, take a look at the yard signs along the roads leading to the rural community of Scio, southeast of Salem.

“NO FACTORY CHICKEN FARM in our community!”

You’ll see them on homes and farms displaying Trump banners today and on front gates that sported Biden signs in the last election.

The common ground in this case lies close by the North Santiam River. The immediate issue is chickens – more than a million of them – with the potential to foul the air, pollute the river, and spoil the local watershed. As you’d expect, the unifying cause here is opposition. But this is more than a rural NIMBY moment or another pitchfork revolt against Big Ag.

Yes, you’ll hear some of those old arguments from this community. The proposed chicken farm would be contracted to raise broilers for California-based Foster Farms, so that has re-ignited a strong strain of resistance to corporate outsiders. But as opponents research their case and sharpen their arguments, their focus has shifted to the failures of our outmoded system of laws to protect farmland and watersheds.

Before I get into those failures and ways to correct them, here in a nutshell is the story unfolding in Scio and the issues it has brought to the fore.

Earlier this year, an Oregon contractor for California-based Foster Farms bought a 60-acre parcel near the town of Scio, 1,500 feet from the North Santiam River. Within days of closing on the property, the new owner filed for building permits for a dozen structures to house and raise chickens. Because such “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFOs) are considered an agricultural use under Oregon’s land use system, the county planning department rubber stamped the permits. They had no authority to treat them differently from applications for barns or sheds on any farmland.

But when local farmers examined the waste management plans that the new landowner filed with the state, they raised the alarm about effects on air quality (more colloquially, a miles-wide “smell zone”), impacts on the river (a source of local drinking water and habitat for endangered salmon), and contamination of the area’s watershed. There is a huge difference between growing grass for seed, as the prior owners did, and raising more than a million chickens in confined buildings that produce 4,500 tons of manure a year and will require an estimated 7.9 million gallons of water to keep the birds alive and clean up after them.

There is one more approval needed for the chicken farm. The Oregon Dept. of Agriculture (ODA) must review all applications for CAFOs. This has triggered the requirement for an official hearing on Oct. 20, the first and only opportunity for public input in this process. But ODA rarely denies applications under the laws and rules that apply to such operations. Another state agency, the Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ), has an interest in the outcome, but it has ceded its authority for Clean Water Act enforcement on farmlands to ODA. That delegation has led to questionable results.  ODA has used its power to shape the state law that defines all forms of industrial livestock operations as a legitimate agricultural use. 

This is an uphill battle for this community, and it’s not a one-off fight. There are other industrial chicken farms proposed for the mid-Valley. But they’ll be hard to beat within the existing state scheme of “right to farm” laws and an agency that defers to industrial ag developers.

Here are the issues and ideas for reforms that I’ve gleaned from those involved in the opposition campaign, each of which has ramifications for a “left, right, and rural” response to the failures of our land use and water conservation systems.

Farmland: Oregon’s land use system, whose goals include the preservation of farmland, was enacted in 1973, long before industrial livestock operations became commonplace. So, it ignored the question of when a farm becomes a factory, paves over land, and affects the water and air around it. Not all crop farming is pristine, of course. But good farmland, when abused, can be rehabilitated, which is not the case when it’s paved over and crisscrossed with massive buildings. 

Reform: Update Oregon’s land use laws to better protect high-value farmland and reclassify CAFOs as industrial operations.

Water: Oregon’s agricultural water laws treat livestock operations as if they’re small family farms, allowing the diversion of irrigation water to serve an unlimited number of animals. That’s a loophole in an already weak statutory scheme for water conservation that allows exploitation of this resource by industrial developers.

Reform: Return the authority for Clean Water Act enforcement on farmlands to DEQ and strengthen state law to protect water supplies that are now increasingly likely to be constrained by drought and “heat dome” events.

Local Control: Preservationists in Oregon have fought for decades to keep meaningful decision-making on land uses in the hands of state agencies, not trusting local jurisdictions to comply with state goals. As a result, local officials are cut out of the process. In this instance, the Scio community has to contend with a state bureaucracy to protect its air, water, and livability.

Reform: Restore some measure of local control by allowing elected officials at the city and county levels to weigh in on these decisions.

Tax subsidies: Companies like Foster Farms can all too easily exploit the weaknesses in our land use and water conservation laws and, when operating through contracted land owners, they can indirectly reap the benefit of our generous agricultural property tax abatements.

Reform: Limit our agricultural property tax abatements to farms that preserve their land.

Not all of these solutions align neatly with left or right agendas, nor are they likely to be embraced in full by those who oppose projects like the Scio chicken farm. Progressives tend to look askance at localizing land use decisions, even when they oppose state preemptions for their cities. And even small family farmers would be nervous about tampering with the property tax exemptions for agriculture.

But the Scio experience and other community fights over industrial livestock operations are highlighting fundamental issues for rural Oregonians and for all of us who care about our state’s natural resources. These are unifying concerns, which connect to shared values. If we take them seriously and set aside our partisan lenses, what I see here is an opportunity to confront the failings of old systems, bridge urban-rural divides and help us shape shared solutions to protect the livability of our state from economic exploitation and the threats of a changing climate.

Tim served as Chief of Staff for Gov. Kulongoski. A former union leader, he lives near Independence and oversees a specialty apple orchard.