Readers respond: Protect Oregon’s land use system

There was an excessive amount of press protection currently relating to the efforts to draw new or expanded chip manufacturing crops in Oregon. (“Intel lobbyists: Oregon will ‘miss out’ on chip business constructing increase with out extra incentives,” Oct. 6, “Microchip Know-how contemplates main manufacturing facility enlargement in Gresham,” Oct. 5)

Whereas this effort is comprehensible notably in an election yr, and the notion of job progress is enticing, we should be cautious about unintended penalties. Oregon is lucky to have a land use system which has been a mannequin for different areas for almost 50 years. Whereas it isn’t excellent, it has efficiently contained city sprawl and guarded our most respected and irreplaceable sources: our farm and forest lands.

Oregon’s city improvement is concentrated within the Willamette Valley (together with the Tualatin Valley), which places such improvement in direct competitors with agriculture for the very best farmlands within the state. We’ve got tough decisions with respect to defending these restricted land sources versus creation of extra urbanization. My worry is that incremental decisions to chill out our planning system for brief time period job and employment positive aspects will sacrifice our agricultural financial system in addition to the livability of the environment.

We’ve got decisions right here: acre by acre sacrifice the valley and sometime notice we’re simply one other place just like the Silicon Valley or search for methods to facilitate financial progress within the jap and southern elements of the state the place the economies are in dire want and the influence on top quality farmland will not be so extreme.

Lansing Stout, Cornelius