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By RODGER NICHOLS
The Dalles
Chronicle
“This issue will be the biggest to come before the commission in
its history,” said commissioner Honna Sheffield at the Dec. 9
meeting of the Columbia River Gorge Commission.
That political hot potato is a formal request filed Dec. 2 to
expand the City of Hood River’s exempt urban area by 20 acres to
build a new school. If approved, it would be the first change in
the borders of the National Scenic Area since minor mapping errors
were corrected in 1997.
If the request is approved, those 20 acres would be removed
permanently from the NSA.
That, opponents fear, would set a precedent for subsequent
requests, which would further shrink the amount of land in the
Gorge subject to National Scenic Area protections.
Two other cities,
The Dalles
and Lyle, have also been preparing requests for urban area
expansions. Those will likely reach the commission by the end of
2009.
The commission has known these three proposals were in the works
for some time. It set aside its entire June meeting for a workshop
on the subject, and used its September meeting date for a tour of
urban areas in the eastern Gorge. A similar tour for the western
Gorge was held in late October.
Just how serious is the issue? A former congressional aide told
the commission at the June session the whole purpose of the
National Scenic Area Act was “to not allow those urban areas to
become sort of a cancer that starts dissolving the scenic area
from the inside out.”
But cities in
Oregon
also are required to provide a 20-year buildable lands supply as
part of the state’s land use ordinances, putting Gorge cities in a
bind.
For the complete article pick up a copy of the
December 17 Hood River News.
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