Opponents of a planned water treatment facility on farmland near Portland claim its construction was approved without sufficient consideration of agricultural impacts.

The drinking water filtration project will forever change the rural area’s character and disrupt the business of surrounding nurseries in Multnomah County, according to local community organizations and landowners.

Construction impact debated

“Five to seven years of construction is not temporary and many of the impacts are in fact permanent,” said Jeff Kleinman, an attorney for one group of opponents, during a Sept. 24 land-use appeal hearing.

However, the Portland Water Bureau and Multnomah County argue that opponents are improperly focusing on the project’s construction, rather than objecting to the water facility’s ongoing operations.

“Construction is not the proposed land use under review,” said David Blankfeld, the county’s attorney, who warned against blocking the project on those grounds. “It would dramatically change the scope of land-use reviews across the state.”

94-acre facility debated

Debate has already persisted for years over the 94-acre facility, which would filter up to 135 million gallons of drinking water per day, as well as the associated pipelines needed to move water to and from the site.

Last year, neighborhood groups, agriculture organizations, farmland preservation advocates and others failed to convince the Portland Water Bureau and Multnomah County to reject the facility, which is why it’s now being considered by the state’s land-use Board of Appeals.

Recent oral arguments before LUBA largely centered on construction effects and how they were evaluated, but opponents claim city and county officials made numerous other legal errors in approving the project.

Among other critics, the Oregon Association of Nurseries, the Multnomah County Farm Bureau and the 1000 Friends of Oregon nonprofit have filed legal petitions against the project. LUBA expects to issue a decision in the case by Nov. 18. Opponents can challenge that ruling before the Oregon Court of Appeals.

The water filtration facility would be built in a “mixed use agriculture” zone while the pipelines would run through “exclusive farm use” zones, so the dispute partly concerns the proper legal standards for examining the project’s agricultural impacts.

Opponents argue that construction activities were incorrectly excluded from consideration, given the prolonged timeline for completing the facility and installing the pipelines.

Traffic a concern

Traffic on nearby rural roads will greatly increase, forcing nurseries and other farms to reroute shipments, said Carrie Richter, an attorney representing project opponents.

“Farmers will have to accept congestion delays,” raising trucking costs up to $200 per load of nursery stock, she said. Some growers will likely shut down or leave the area while others will need to change the entrances to their properties, contrary to land-use protections for agriculture.

“The only way farmers have any control over their destiny is to reconfigure their farms,” Richter said.

Opponents argue it’s irrelevant to affected farmers whether they’re driven out of business by the extended construction or the water facility’s operations, but city and county officials counter that temporary disruptions must be evaluated differently than long-term land-use changes.

If the project’s approval is overturned based on construction effects, the precedent will be “a massive departure from land-use law as we know it,” said Zoee Lynn Powers, attorney for the Portland Water Bureau.

Altering routes and using detours is an accepted farm practice and doesn’t impose impermissibly significant burdens on growers, she said.

Regarding the traffic resulting from the water filtration plant itself, the city and county claim that it doesn’t rise to the level of violating agricultural land-use protections.

In a previous ruling, LUBA approved a gravel mining operation on Grand Island in the Willamette River even though it allows trucks to traveling through nearby farmland for 30 years, Powers said.

“The findings in this case address the cumulative impacts of construction,” she said.