[All-Gorge] 🛬 "Runway": Gorge Commission Reopens the Management Plan - Sept '26

Sixty people came to a community center in Underwood to say what living inside the National Scenic Area actually costs them. Almost none of it ever becomes a court case. Meanwhile the Gorge Commission has been briefed on the 10-year rewrite of the Gorge Management Plan that could change that story, and the Forest Service says waiting until 2030 would be legal. Here is how the last rewrite worked, and where you get a say.

In This Episode

• A half-inch pipe, a livestock well, and the permit that costs the same as a carwash
• Why only four NSA application appeals in four years may not be the reassurance it sounds like
• Why "Gorge 2030" is not a process yet, and what the staff calendar actually recommends
• Section 6(g): the clock opened in October 2025 and does not close until 2030
• What provably changed the words of the 2020 plan
• The two hearings the law guarantees, and the sixty-day county clock the packet prints as ninety
• She Who Watches, and a request the Chair answered on the spot

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com, where every fact in this episode is sourced and linked.
• Gorge Commission meetings, agendas and recordings: gorgecommission.org
• Written comment: PublicComment@gorgecommission.org

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Transcript

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Nearly an hour was spent on the next gorge management plan. No motion, no vote, and the Forest Service saying out loud that the whole review could wait until 2030 and still be legal. That's how the Columbia River Gorge Commission spent part of its September 8th meeting. Rin Palmer, the interim forest supervisor, summed up the law this way. It can start now, or can start by 2020. We would not be required to do it quite that soon. No commissioner disputed her. If you've heard Gorge 2030 going around, here's the honest version. It's not a process quite yet. The typed agenda called the item a staff overview of the Act's legal requirements. No asterisk marked it, open for comment, and none was taken. Executive Director Christina Wolonowski and staff were compiling the county's unaddressed comments from the last review, which she called, quote, kind of a runway to full plan review, unquote. Commission Council Jeff Litwock was flatter, quote, we're not yet at the point of designing a full plan review process, unquote. And here's why that Gorge Management Plan rewrite is worth your time. About 60 people came to the Underwood Community Center on August 21st, 2025, for the first ever community forum on living inside the National Scenic Area. More than a dozen people spoke. The published summary lists what they described, homes bought legally and later treated as abandoned, applications turned down for farm structures, wine tasting rooms, accessory dwellings for family members, and disability-related home improvements. Commission's own executive director was in the room. And a disclosure. This writer, that's me, convened that forum and co-wrote the public summary. I am indeed a full-time resident and homeowner inside the National Scenic Area. And so, I have inevitable personal and financial interest in any story regarding the Gorge Commission, and this one's no exception. I'll always do my best to note that where it touches the story, like today. But you don't have to take my word for it. A problem of exactly that shape reached the commission in writing. In May 2026, the owner of Be Easy Farm near Troutdale wanted to run a half-inch pipe underground from a new livestock well to a water tank. Both the well and the livestock are allowed outright on that farmland. The county said it needed a full reviewed use. In the owner's words, quote, what I would need to put in a car wash costs $3,000, and most impactful, one year of permitting, a whole year where I wouldn't be able to run water to my animals, unquote. Almost none of these applications ever become a case that goes before the Gorge Commission for Appeal. The guidelines counties turn into ordinances have been enforced for about four years from the last Gorge Management Plan update, and in that time the Commission's own appeals docket has collected four decisions. Not one of them turns a rule on the 2020 rewrite, and that's because the docket records only the fights that escalate to an appeal. But you can see there's still impacts on folks who go through the regular process, and often those issues are the code working as it is built. Let's look at the clock. Section 6G of the National Scenic Act, a federal law, is one sentence. No sooner than five years after the plan is adopted, but at least every 10 years, the Commission shall review it to decide whether it should be revised. The last gorge management plan was adopted October 13th, 2020. The five-year floor cleared in October 2025, and the outer limit falls in 2030. The Commission is now in front of that window. Staff put a recommended schedule on paper for the first time, manage the meetings with the six counties and the four treaty tribes, and report back away winter. Design the review in January 2027. Run it through 2029, then write the revisions into county ordinances by 2031. Every up there is conditional. The last rewrite was planned as three years and took four. Now, here's how the last rewrite of the Gorge Management Plan worked. It opened with a roadshow. Staff gave 18 presentations to local governments and scoped closed in March 2017 with more than 400 comments. Then, in October 2017, a year in, the commission picked its topics and everything else was out of scope for three years. On staff's calendar, the same moment lands in 2027. Comment came at five separate phases, not one. The one almost nobody knows about, three separate 30-day windows on individual chapters before each went to the Gorge Commission. That's where a chapter level suggestion had its best chance of making it in. Then came June 2020. It was 30 days on a 452-page document in the first COVID spring, so you can imagine how that affected the process. There were two Zoom events. The comment session drew 17 speakers and adjourned 45 minutes early because nobody else wanted a comment. It was just three minutes on a timer, and five of the 12 voting commissioners came. Three governments asked for more time and didn't get it. So what actually changed the words? How did those edits get in there? By the time that the June draft went out, most of the text edits had already been made. That's a fact about drafting order, not proof that public comment didn't matter. One small business made one concrete ask and got it. Runsible Cider in Mosier wrote in June 2020. Hard cider, they said, is conspicuously absent from some of the regulations. Please include cideries as equivalent to wineries. A broad motion covering every beverage producer failed in August. Staff came back with narrow language, and cideries indeed passed. And a commenter's own sentence walked onto the floor. The minutes from September 8th, 2020 record a motion to add language suggested by Michael Lang of Friends of the Columbia Gorge. The commission acknowledges and regrets Oregon's history of structural racism. It carried 10 to 1 and it is in the adopted plan. That is the most transferable lesson. You should write the sentence you want and get it in front of a commissioner who will move it forward. Now the part that matters most if you own land out here. Section 6E of the Act guarantees two rounds, not one. Hearings and comments before final adoption of the management plan, and again before final adoption of the county land use ordinances. Door one attaches the revised plan 2027 to 2029. Door two attaches the county ordinances two years after that. Door two decides what you meet at the county counter when you apply, because the plan regulates nobody until the county writes it into an ordinance. In click a tat, that job is the Gorge Commissions. So between those doors, what's open? Written comment on an agenda item reaches the commissioners in advance and is posted with the meeting materials under your personal name. Spoken comment comes at open item near the start of every meeting and after every starred item. And the commission now meets every other month, which halves our chances to speak in a year. So now that we have all of that background and of course all of that process, I don't blame you if that sounded a little bit confusing, and we go through it more in detail in the written edition. I think we're going to probably put together a kind of timeline that folks can follow along. We can now get back to the actual September 2026 meeting. So briefly the rest of the morning. Commissioner Valerie Fowler pressed the Forest Service on prescribed fire because Gorge Wine grows in microclimates a distant weather station cannot see. The Interim Forest Supervisor would not commit to advanced community meetings that Fowler said her predecessor had agreed to keep. Two artificial intelligence disclosures landed six minutes apart. One volunteered and prompted by Economic Vitality Chair Black Litwer. And the moment of the meeting, a Yakim and Nation cultural specialist asked the commission to keep She Who Watches, a well-known petroglyph, out of any public 40th anniversary event. Beliefs differ among families, bands, and tribes, she said, and some will not even look at her. Chair Karina Miller answered on the spot. She said she was raised with both understandings and narrowed her own anniversary proposal to a tribal-only event. Next, the dated things that you can act on. October 1st, 2026, the amendment carrying post-fire disaster recovery rules takes effect. November 10th, 2026, Commission meeting, 8 30 in the morning, in person at Scamania Lodge in Stevenson and on Zoom. January 2027. That's when, on staff's recommendation, the Commission starts deciding how this Gorge 2030 Gorge Management Plan Review will run. And one deadline. The Commission's own page says meeting videos come down after three months. Its own rule says six months. Which one it follows is an open question, so download what you need. I know we'll be getting in touch with them about that as well. One more thing. The Gorge Management Plan review process runs for years. Six counties, two states, four treaty tribes, a federal agency. That scales a lot of what kept the public out of the process last time, and it's a lot for one small newsroom like us to watch. So if you report, take notes, or just turn up, we'd rather not be the only ones in the room. Please get in touch. We'd love to collaborate. A note on sources. When this was recorded, the commission had not yet approved its minutes for September 8th, so every quote from that meeting comes from the video machine transcribed. Every fact here is sourced and linked in the written edition. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, home with Scmania Dispatch and the Click a Tattler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the gorge, head over to Schmaniadispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.comslash open gorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.