Clackamas hearings officer leaves record open after staff recommends denial of Astra Solar 12‑acre project

Joe Turner, the hearings officer contracted by the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners, opened a March 12 public hearing on Astra Solar’s conditional‑use application for a 12‑acre photovoltaic facility at 25205 South Metzler Park Road and reviewed the rules for testimony and appeal to the Land Use Board of Appeals.

County planning staff presented their report and recommended denial. Joy Fields, county planning staff, said the roughly 60‑acre parcel is proposed to host a 12‑acre solar array and that staff found the application failed to meet multiple approval criteria. Staff flagged prime soils in the parcel’s northeast corner (classified in the staff report as an 80B soil mapping designation) and said Oregon Administrative Rules that limit solar on high‑value farmland require a showing that avoidance is infeasible. Fields said the applicant had not demonstrated infeasibility and that there appeared to be discrepancies on the submitted site plan regarding setbacks and site‑distance for the proposed access drive.

Counsel for Astra Solar, Tim Pearson, challenged staff’s legal conclusions, arguing the county’s right‑of‑way dedication condition lacked individualized findings and that staff’s market‑impact reasoning about loss of hay did not match the farm‑impact test used in prior LUBA and state cases. Technical representatives for the applicant, including Spencer Wallace of Conifer Energy Partners, said the project would be roughly 3 MW AC, occupy 12 acres of a roughly 59–60 acre parcel, interconnect to the local grid to serve Portland General Electric customers, and produce roughly the equivalent of power for 450 homes. Wallace said panels would be mounted on driven steel piles (no concrete foundations), the applicant would remove panels from areas mapped as 80B prime soils, and that erosion, compaction and weed‑mitigation plans had been prepared.

Residents and neighboring landowners offered both support and opposition. Janella Asplund, who lives two houses down from the proposed array, urged approval, saying the project helps preserve a family farm and adds local renewable capacity. Several neighbors including Don and Susan Thompson and Michelle Swain opposed the application or asked that the site be moved, citing proximity to homes and driveways, sight‑distance and traffic safety near a hillcrest used by many park visitors, the potential for inverter noise to affect livestock, wildfire single‑egress evacuation concerns, and uncertainty in the soil mapping at the scale used in the application. Several speakers asked for a 250‑foot buffer or a small eastward site shift to reduce visual and safety impacts.

The applicant and its attorney disputed many of those technical concerns. The applicant said pile driving is the loudest short‑term construction activity (estimated two weeks within a 4–6 month construction window), that the Escoda (Estacada) Fire District reviewed and stamped the plan with fire‑safety measures (including a 12‑foot cleared access/defensible area), that a wood picket fence approximately 7 feet high is proposed, and that decommissioning would remove driven piles, buried conduit and bulk gravel so the land could be returned to farming.

Turner concluded the hearing by agreeing to leave the record open to accommodate additional evidence and studies. The schedule established at the hearing requires any new written testimony and evidence to be received by March 26 at 4:00 PM, with the county posting materials March 30; a second response period will end April 13; and the applicant has until April 27 to file a final written argument (the applicant may waive that deadline). Turner said he aimed to issue a final written decision by May 11 but noted possible delays and said parties of record would receive the decision once issued.

The hearing put the central question before the hearings officer: whether the application can be conditioned to avoid or mitigate impacts to mapped high‑value farmland and to resolve fence/setback and site‑distance issues identified by county engineering, or whether those unresolved criteria warrant denial. The hearings officer will make a written decision after the record closes that addresses those questions and the evidence submitted.