Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
Wasco County Commissioners met yesterday, and said the state of Oregon, which gives the county $50,000 a year to assist in processing applications in the Scenic Area, had added $20,000 for the biennium to help with the increase in applications from people who lost their homes in the Rowena Fire.
County Planning Director Kelly Howsley-Glover said there’s some concern that new applications for solar energy projects should have greater setbacks from roads and structures, but it’s a longstanding law that you can’t move the goalposts in the middle of the game:
“The rules that are in place at the time of application are the rules we are required to review the application by. So we can’t accept an application, then change the rule and then they have to be reviewed under the new rules.”
Chair Scott Hege announced that phase 1 of the Rowena Fire Rehabilitation, the removal of toxic waste, had been completed, and that it had been paid for by the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. That’s not true for phase 2, the removal of debris. Hege said the state might come up with perhaps $1.5 million of the estimate $5.8 million project.
“In order to finish this project, we are gonna have to go to the E-board and ask them for funding to pay for that. We are not going to pay for it out of general funds. The possibility of doing that, and doing that for every fire for me is very difficult.”
And commissioners approved a new fee schedule for the building codes deprtment