OSU-Cascades Vice President Becky Johnson tells KBND News they are in the fact finding phase to see if the landfill will work for expansion. “We’re going to bring over some faculty, experts in engineering from Corvallis who are going to take a look at that site with us with county representatives and others and see if there is some out-of-the-box thinking about how you can clean it up.” She admits, that won't be easy, “We know that you can scoop out a lot of bad material and truck it off to somewhere else. That’s like the most expensive way to remediate that site. But there might be some other ideas that have to do with capping, building on piers, you know, things like that that aren’t as expensive and then, where do you get the funds for whichever option we end up choosing.”

 

A non-binding letter of intent between Deschutes County and OSU-Cascades provides for a two-year framework for exploring the viability of reclaiming the former demolition landfill as part of the OSU-Cascades campus.