In Oregon, a Microchip Gold Rush Could Pave Over Long-Protected Farmland

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Beyond the fields of berries, grass seed, and wheat at Jacque Duyck Jones’s farm in Oregon, she can see distant plumes of exhaust spewing from factories in Hillsboro, just outside Portland. Years ago, Jones and her family didn’t worry much about industry creeping closer to their land. A 50-year-old state law that restricts urban growth, rare in the United States, kept smokestacks and strip malls away.

But a national push to make semiconductors — the microchips that help power modern electronics, from dishwashers to electric vehicles — has prompted Oregon lawmakers to lift some of those restrictions. Keen to tap into $52 billion that Congress earmarked last year in the CHIPS and Science Act, Oregon legislators last week passed a bipartisan bill aimed at enticing chip manufacturers to set up shop in the state, in part by allowing them to convert some of the country’s richest farmland into factories. The bill gives Governor Tina Kotek, a Democrat, authority through the end of next year to extend urban development boundaries, a process currently subject to appeals that can be drawn out for years.

“That’s like granting divine power,” said Ben Williams, president of Friends of French Prairie, a rural land advocacy group. Under the bill, the governor can select two rural sites of more than 500 acres and six smaller ones for development related to the semiconductor industry. That revision to the state’s rigid land-use system has drawn pushback from farmers and conservation organizations. They say the legislation endangers farms, soil health, and carbon sequestration efforts. One potential site for a factory would pave over rural land