There are approximately 256 designated unincorporated communities in Oregon. These communities are mostly without public water, sewers and other infrastructure needed to support urban level uses. For example, in Lane County, they include Swisshome, Fall Creek, London, Deadwood, Walton, Rainbow and 28 more — a total of 34.

Recently, the state Department of Land Conservation and Development initiated a rule-making process –– amending Oregon Administrative Rules –– with the intent of allowing more development in, and enlarging, designated unincorporated communities statewide. 

The intent is to find ways to allow increased residential, commercial and industrial development, even in communities where there is no infrastructure to support those types of uses.

This rule-making would not build housing that is affordable to most Oregonians. But it would require participating counties to rezone rural farmland and forest land for commercial and “light industrial” uses, potentially including data centers, Amazon warehouses or other urban development.

This rule-making is progressing at a rapid pace. Eighteen people, including at least six lobbying organizations, (but no unincorporated community residents, coastal residents or staff from Lane County), have recently been appointed to serve on the advisory committee that will review the Department of Land Conservation and Development’s proposals and make recommendations to the state Land Conservation and Development Commission by the end of the year.

ORS 183.333 requires that advisory committee membership must represent the interests of “communities likely to be affected by the rule as well as those of ‘persons’ likely to be affected by the rule.” Therefore, residents of unincorporated communities rather than lobbyists and for-profit development interests should have been the focus of the committee appointments.

If you care about keeping rural Oregon communities rural and not seeing rural Oregon suburbanized, please send an email to the chair of the Land Conservation and Development Commission: allan.lazo@dlcd.oregon.gov. Tell the commission to stop this inappropriate rule-making and keep urban development inside cities, where it belongs.

Lauri Segel
LandWatch Lane County