WARRENTON – A recent decision by the Oregon Legislature will allow Rilea Armed Forces Training Center to grow by 2.8 acres.

The owner of the 2.8-acre parcel of land is giving the Oregon Military Department the opportunity to purchase the land before putting it on the market.

The Legislature’s Emergency Board has given the project a green light by allowing the Oregon Military Department to spend some of the profit it has made from selling other properties.

The parcel, which is located on the southeast border of Camp Rilea, will allow expansion of the reservation’s connection to U.S. Highway 101. Private landowners border the camp on three sides; other borders include the Pacific Ocean to the west and parts of Ridge Road on the east. Clatsop County owns property to the east and southeast.

In December, Rilea was used as a shelter for victims of the storm and is in line to become the county’s new emergency headquarters.

State Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose who sits on the state E-Board, championed the project.

Without the leadership offered by Camp Rilea and Oregon Military Department staff earlier this year, Johnson said, “people in Clatsop County would have died.”

While many legislators felt that the $340,000 land purchase was necessary, analysts from the Legislative Fiscal Office disagreed. They made the recommendation to deny the OMD’s request.

“We are very respectful of the professional staff that prepared the report that said ‘this should not go forward,'” Johnson said. “But we clearly disagreed with the outcome.”

When the analysts presented their recommendation to deny the Oregon Military Department’s request, Sen. Alan Bates, D-Ashland, wasn’t happy.

“Six, seven, eight months later when the emergency is passed, we have a tendency to say, ‘You spent too much money here, you make too much noise.'”

“It really got my goat,” he said. “It happened just last winter… how soon we forget.”

More than one-third of Camp Rilea is at risk from tsunami surge water, according to the Oregon Military Department. And this is one of the major reasons that analysts recommended denying the purchase of additional property, doubting the value of the military reservation in an emergency.

“When the creeks start rising, you sure want the National Guard then,” Bates said. “These are fellow Oregonians. These are people that live and work in Oregon and they need a place to train.”

Bates believes that the camp proved its utility last December.

Johnson said adding extra land would help as a buffer of sorts between the camp – that can sometimes feature noisy or dusty training drills – and surrounding homes or farms.

“This is just terribly, terribly important,” Johnson said. “It was an opportunity to just help guard against incompatible encroachment against their borders.

“It would be very easy for someone to acquire that property and build a house and make a move to curtail activities on the military reservation.”

The boundaries of military reservations are frequently being tested by neighbors, said Brig. Gen. Mike Caldwell.

“The primary benefit is that encroachment issues around the camp are a conflict,” said Caldwell, deputy director of the Oregon Military Department.

Camp Rilea is used by all branches of the military, active and reserve. The site is also used by civilian groups like the boy scouts and law enforcement groups like special weapons and tactics teams. The reservation includes a mess hall, barracks and pistol and rifle ranges.

“We need to do this expansion, because we need Camp Rilea,” said Bates, the Ashland senator. “It’s a logical thing to continue the base, to expand it, when the opportunity develops.”