Workers at OSU-Cascades have repurposed cleaned soil from landfills on campus and used it to fill the old pumice mine. Eventually, the level will rise to closer to level of the brush in the foreground. 

OSU-Cascades has been transforming a pumice mine and landfill into a college campus, building a future from the unwanted of the past.

It will be asking the Legislature in the February session for help to continue restoring the land to build out the campus — $24 million in help.

It’s an investment in students and in Oregon’s future.

The landfills on campus are like big, scary versions of the compost piles people have in their backyards. Below the surface, workers have found temperature can hit 130 degrees and more, as material breaks down. It’s not a good idea to have big piles of intact tires mixed in with the other construction waste in the landfill. It’s a candidate for pyrolysis, a kind of burn.

And the tires are there. Workers on campus have pulled more than 10,000 cubic yards of tires from the ground. They are testing and cleaning landfill soil, grinding up the tires and redistributing the old landfill waste to put it to good, safe use. Cleaned soil has been spread in the pumice mine, gradually filling it in. The ground-up tires, wood and other waste of landfill is being reburied on the campus using modern landfill practices. The land atop that will be used for recreation fields. It’s recycling on a grand scale.

The $24 million is about continuing the work to reclaim the land and create future space for housing and more. The campus hasn’t hit the limit of its 300 beds, yet. And not everybody must live on campus. But if you look at the appetite of students who want to come to OSU-Cascades, it may hit housing capacity in 2026. OSU-Cascades is going to need more housing, student recreation areas and eventually more academic buildings.

The $24 million would be a long-term investment in Central Oregon and the state, Sherman Bloomer, the chancellor and dean of Oregon State University-Cascades Campus, told us.

It may be an ambitious request in a short session with so many other demands for money. We did speak briefly about it to House Speaker Dan Rayfield and House Majority Leader Julie Fahey on Tuesday morning. It was the first they had heard of it and they didn’t sound optimistic — with the budget limitations and stated Democratic funding priorities this short session for investment in housing and fighting homelessness.

OK, outside of those priorities, what would be a better investment in Oregon’s future? What would be a better investment for Oregon students?