Land Law Blog

[Pavido Scalf]

Nowentering its 14th year, the non-profit Oregon Truffle Festival's mission is to educate the public about native-grown truffles in the Willamette Valley. With events and workshops tailored to truffle cultivators, foragers (and their dogs!), chefs, epicures, and the merely curious, the festival celebrates a burgeoning culinary industry.

Truffles have been enjoyed for centuries in Europe, but it is only in the last decade or so that North American truffles have begun to appear on the gastronomic radar, including those wild black and white truffles endemic to the Pacific Northwest as well as European varieties such as the black Prigord that are now cultivated here.

If you're intrigued by this newly emerging homegrown truffle culture, consider joining me January 25-27 for the festival's Urban Forager Package, an action-packed crash course that introduces food lovers to the fungi's ineffable pleasures. The package includes an Italian-inspired Friday evening at March Provisions in downtown Eugene for bites and drinks; a Saturday excursion (hosted by me) with stops at Mountain Rose Herbs, J. Scott Cellars, and the 5th Street Market (for more truffle bites and pairings), followed by the multi-course Grand Truffle Dinner that night; and a Sunday visit to the Truffle Marketplace for tastings, cooking demos, and talks.

Bottom line: You don't have to travel all the way to France or Italy to experience the charms of truffle culture.

Recently I had the pleasure of talking with Jason Rolfe, a writer and fishing guide who uses fly-fishing as the put-in to navigate an ever-changing stream of words, art, and ideas through a variety of mediums. In addition to guiding and taking shifts at my local flyshop, Emerald Water Anglers in West Seattle, Jason operates the Syzygy Fly Fishing web site, runs a podcast called The Fly Tapes, and is the impresario behind Writers on the Fly, a traveling reading series that combines tales inspired by fly-fishing with visual art, music, conservation, and beer (not necessarily in that order).

In episode three of The Fly Tapes I talk to Jason about salmon culture, the recent release of my book Upstream: Searching for Wild Salmon, from River to Table, and the writing life, among many other topics, in a wide-ranging conversation that might as well be taking place in a drift boat deep within a basalt slot canyon.

In related news, this week kicks off the second annual Cascadia Tour for Writers on the Fly, with readings/happenings in Bend (11/14) Portland (11/15), Seattle (11/16), Bellingham (11/17), and Vancouver, BC. (11/18) I'll be at the PDX gig this Wednesday with several other esteemed writers, artists, conservationists, and moon-howlers.

The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) is delighted to announce that LAND-at-scale has recently started in Egypt, being integrated into the broader Agricultural Innovation Project (AIP phase II) implemented by GIZ Egypt, co-financed by Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and

In the years following the Covid-19 Pandemic, the affordability and availability of homes has become a glaring issue in Pennsylvania and beyond, primarily due to rising interest rates, inflation, labor shortages, and an overall shortage of housing supply. In January 2024, housing listings were down nearly 20% and sales dropped more than 3% year-over-year with a median home price that is 42% higher than it was in January 2019, according to the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors.

In recent months, Pennsylvania lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have sponsored bills that emphasize the urgency of the housing crisis facing the Commonwealth. These laws could have significant impacts on the future of municipal law and land use development.

We would not blame you if you said that dealing with attorneys is not your favorite part of being a municipal official. However, in our defense, people use attorneys because they need help with complicated legal processes and disputes that are often difficult for laypeople to fully understand. Moreover, applications involving convoluted and unnecessary steps are not only a source of confusion for applicants, but they also create a heavy burden on municipalities. So here is our take on how to simplify your zoning and subdivision/land development processes, and maybe see less of us attorneys.

We discussed several ways that the blockchain and smart contracts can benefit our industry. For example: Smart contracts can automate pieces of the sales process, the process of obtaining permits and approvals, the release of plans, and the depositing and release of financial security, among other processes. By recording documents on a blockchain, we make them more accessible and accurate. By creating a shared database of information on the blockchain, we can reduce duplication among agencies and departments and reduce errors. This automatic and tamper-proof approach creates a clean record of transactions, reduces costs, and saves time.

Our prior two posts on blockchain technology and real estate looked at blockchain basics and how it can be used to make real estate transactions and the recording of documents more transparent, efficient, and secure. But I suggest that blockchain technology can do more. Specifically, when it comes to the land use process, which includes zoning, subdivision, land development, and related processes required to develop a property.

As of late December 2023, Bitcoin was up more than 60% in the prior four months while another well-known cryptocurrency, Solana, was up over 240%. The cryptocurrencies were on their annual Fall bull run, but there seems to be more to why they have jumped in value in the past several months. At least in my opinion, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and related technologies and concepts are here to stay.

The McNees Land Use Blog offers insight on current laws and local, state and federal policies and decisions that affect the use and development of land. It provides updates in the areas of zoning, subdivision and land development, state agency permitting, municipal permitting, stormwater, and traffic planning, among others, that are useful to developers, consultants, and municipal officials and staff. Contributors to the blog include all members of the Land Use division, and the blog is maintained by Esch McCombie and Peter Wertz.

I cannot and do not speak for all Indigenous people. However, I am a person of Indigenous descent who has personal experiences, membership in a tribal community, local Indigenous connections, and knowledge through research and reading. In my experience, most people in the United States know almost nothing about the Indigenous people who were here, are here, and will continue to be here.

I have been a teacher of children and adults for over thirty years. Specifically, I'm a special education teacher and an anti-racism instructor/ facilitator. The events of this past year have highlighted, or refocused, national attention on anti-racism. I noticed many schools hiring DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) Directors; setting anti-racism goals as a district and asking teachers to do the same; and updating their websites to have multicultural resource "hubs," just to name a few things. I have also noticed that in almost every situation, when I ask about, or bring up, the Indigenous perspective, I am met with silence at best, or counter arguments citing the places where "diversity" has already been included at worst. This is a false comparison.

When I say Indigenous people are invisible, I mean more invisible than you even think. This land, now known as North and South America, has been home to Indigenous nations from time immemorial. Indigenous people have not emigrated to anywhere in the world in large numbers. That means, there is no other place in the world where mass migrations of Indigenous people have immigrated. For example, there is no other place in the world where one would expect the history, leaders, and contributions of Wampanoag, Cherokee, Aztec, Arawak, Din, or Maya, among others, to be discussed.

"We are already diversifying" is not an appropriate response when talking about Indigenous people because every other ethnic, racial, and religious group that is living in the United States has another place in the world where their ancestors are from. There is already a place for their people and their voices, experiences, examples, history, and contributions, to be experienced and told. We should absolutely expect to learn the true and accurate stories of this land, and this land's longest occupants, especially when we reside on this land where the people and their stories happened. This land starts and ends with Indigenous people. And that makes all the difference

One of the first steps that an individual or collective can do is to develop a Tribal Land Acknowledgment or TLA. It leans into unerasing and makes visible the Indigenous people of the land where you are or your event is happening. Indigenous nations rarely do land acknowledgments for their own land, though they typically do acknowledge their own ancestry, often in their tribal language. However, if an organization or group has an Indigenous student or staff member who wants or requests to do so, it makes sense to have them deliver a TLA in whatever way they see fit. Non-Indigenous people should do TLAs in an effort to acknowledge the attempted genocide of Indigenous people, take ownership of being visitors on someone else's territory, potentially introduce current events, and most importantly, to unerase the Indigenous voices, experiences, examples, history, and contributions, while dismantling oppression and stereotypes.

When developing a TLA, one must be careful in consideration of what they include. For example, territory names and the Indigenous people who live on them sometimes vary, depending on what year is being used as a reference point, what map is being used, and if it is an Indigenous source or colonizer source. In addition, some areas had several nations moving in and out over time or were part of the "praying villages" and relocation, too. Some territorial "lines" are still being disputed currently. We must do our best, with the resources we have. All in all, in some cases, it's complicated to uncover the original inhabitants.

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