Morrow County planning staff unveil interactive survey explorer and brief commissioners on new state solar-siting rules

Tamara Mabod, Morrow County planning director, and county GIS staff demonstrated a new interactive “survey explorer” that maps recorded surveys and public land corners, and she briefed the Board of Commissioners on recently adopted Eastern Oregon solar-siting administrative rules and the county’s options for implementing them.

Mabod said the survey explorer is intended to replace a manual Excel-and-PDF system and to provide a map-based, user-friendly interface for searching recorded surveys, partition plats and public-land survey corners. GIS staff showed a prototype that allows queries by subdivision name, surveyor or plat number and displays links to survey documents. Planners said roughly 573 surveys were already uploaded and that the team aims to reach a working threshold of about 600 records before wider launch, with a longer-term plan to add many more historical surveys.

Planner and GIS staff described the corners and monument records that surveyors use as part of the public-land survey. Matt Kenny, who maintains the county surveyor records database, said the county currently has only a small number of restored public-land-corner records available in the tool and that those will be added incrementally as coordinates are compiled.

On solar siting, Mabod summarized the policy choices the county faces after the state issued updated Eastern Oregon rules (administrative rules cited as “division 44” in planning materials) that affect thresholds and screening criteria for utility‑scale solar on farmland. Mabod described three paths: (1) opt in to directly implement the new division 44 rules by resolution, (2) adopt the new division 44 rules in addition to the county’s existing division 38 standards, or (3) pursue a countywide planning approach under Statewide Planning Goal 5 (a broader, mapping-based approach analogous to some mineral/aggregate siting processes). She said the county previously sought to increase local siting thresholds and to avoid an opt‑in requirement but did not prevail on those points during the rulemaking.

Mabod explained differences in acreage thresholds under current section 38 versus the new 44 rules and said the new rules add more detailed siting criteria (for example, slope limits, avoidance of high‑value soils and wildlife corridors, and a suggested 19% solar resource threshold for utility-scale arrays). She told commissioners the state statute referenced in her memo (ORS 469.300) was not changed in the rule package and that adopting division 44 by resolution would make those rules effective locally unless the board formally opts out.

Commissioners set a work session to discuss the rules and mapping options on August 6; Mabod recommended inviting farmers, fish-and-wildlife staff and solar-industry representatives to that session. She also said staff could model how existing permitted projects in Morrow County would fare under the new standards so the board could see likely effects before deciding whether to opt in, adopt both sections 38 and 44, or pursue a Goal 5 mapping process.

Mabod and GIS staff emphasized the survey-explorer project is still in development and depends on additional uploads, quality control and a future workflow for planners and the surveyor to keep the map current. The tool, they said, could speed research on partition plats and recorded surveys and would be useful to county staff, surveyors and municipalities that lack their own public access tools.

Next steps: an August 6 work session on solar siting and ongoing roll-out of the survey explorer with additional uploads and quality checks.