Marion County farm dryer burner check

This dryer is not a hop kiln

You operate a farm-crop dryer in Marion County. The burner may look like the burner on a hop kiln across the valley, and the stack may be just as visible. The documents are not the same. Marion County Rural Zoning Code chapter 17.136 addresses facilities for processing farm crops inside the exclusive farm use zone^[1]. The hop-kiln temperature research does not describe this crop. Lane County’s air agency does not issue your permit.

Zoning here is a land-use use, not a published stack-concentration table.
If the burner is large enough, the air permit goes to Oregon DEQ.
LRAPA is the Lane County agency. Filing there from Marion is the wrong office.

The rule that is actually written

Read the zoning chapter for what it is. It authorizes and conditions farm-related uses, including processing of farm crops. It is not, in the text reviewed for this note, an air toxics table with a numeric stack limit for commercial propane dryers. A claim that county zoning already sets a strict stack number is not used here, because the chapter does not print the limit. If a later ordinance does, bring the section. Until then, the honest sentence is that the stack number is not in 17.136.

The air rule that does have numbers is statewide, with a local exception for who administers it. Oregon DEQ requires a permit for activities on Table 1 of OAR 340-216-8010. Gas and propane equipment from 10 to under 30 MMBtu per hour can fall in Basic Permit 04. Oil over 10 MMBtu per hour, or gas at 30 MMBtu per hour and up, is the General Permit 11 band^[2]. LRAPA’s own page says businesses outside Lane County receive air permits from DEQ^[3]. Marion County is outside Lane County. That single jurisdictional sentence is why a Marion URL is not a copy of a Lane URL, and why it is not a copy of the hop-kiln URL either.

Boiler room with a steam boiler, valves, and overhead pipes — Figure 1 — A fuel-burning plant room. On a Marion farm-crop dryer the permit counter is DEQ, not the Lane regional agency, and the product is not hop cones.

If you skip the split

You send the air application to LRAPA because a neighbor in Lane County did, and the packet sits at the wrong agency while the dryer season runs. Or you apply a hop-bed temperature from the aroma research to a crop that is not hops, and you “pass” a dryer that is scorching a different product. Or you tell the county that zoning already set your stack limit, and the planner asks for a section you cannot produce. Each skip is a delay. None of them is fixed by buying a second copy of the Willamette kiln procedure.

Who signs, who pays, how long

Marion County farm-crop dryer. Dollar cells stay blank where the document did not print a fee. Accessed 9 October 2026.
File	Who signs	Fee in the document
Land use for farm-crop processing	Owner or operator with county planning	Not a stack fee; see chapter 17.136
Air permit if Table 1 applies	Owner or operator to DEQ	Not printed on the DEQ page cited here
LRAPA application	Do not use this row from Marion	Wrong agency
Steam vessel, if any	Equipment owner and a licensed boiler business	$175 or $196 installation; operating maxima $110 or $55
Burner diagnostic labor	Contractor	No statewide price found

How the Willamette kiln note differs

The valley kiln note cites USDA acreage and an Oregon State University dissertation on hop drying temperature. Those facts are about cones. They do not become true because a Marion dehydrator also has a fan and a burner. The Lane contrast is administrative: LRAPA versus DEQ. A town that is not drying farm crops under chapter 17.136, and is not outside LRAPA for that reason, should not wear this URL. Salem is inside Marion County and is not a page on this desk. The path is the county rule, not a city card.

Marion dryer against a Willamette hop kiln and against Lane County. The URL exists because those columns differ.
Question	Marion County	Willamette hop kiln	Lane County
Product	Farm crop in a processing use	Hop cones	Not this page
Air agency	DEQ	DEQ if Table 1 applies	LRAPA
Temperature research	Not the hop dissertation	About 125 to 135°F aroma practice	Not this page
Stack ppm in zoning	Not found in 17.136	Not a zoning stack table	LRAPA has its own permit rules

Checklist for this dryer

Confirm the machine dries a farm crop and is not a hop kiln.
Confirm the site is in Marion County, so the air agency is DEQ.
Read the burner MMBtu plate against the 10 and 30 lines.
Do not cite a stack limit from chapter 17.136 unless you can point to the section.
Keep any steam boiler on a Building Codes Division permit.
Do not mail the air file to LRAPA.

Fee and timeline

Verify the DEQ fee with the regional office. It is not printed in the boiler-permit sections of the page cited here, and a blank is more useful than a fiction. Vessel fees, only if a vessel is in scope, are the ORS 480.595 and form 2502c figures already stated^[4]. The timeline that is written is “before you operate a listed source,” plus the county’s land-use process for the processing facility, which moves on the county’s clock rather than on a number this note invents. Dryer season does not pause for a mis-addressed envelope.

Questions a manager actually types

Q1. Does Marion County zoning publish a stack emission limit for dryers?
Chapter 17.136 of the Marion County Rural Zoning Code lists facilities for processing farm crops among the uses in the exclusive farm use zone. The sections reviewed for this note do not print a dust-loading or parts-per-million stack limit for a propane burner. If you were told the zoning code sets a strict stack number, ask for the section. The emission threshold that is printed statewide is the DEQ heat-input table, not a sentence this county code does not contain.
Q2. Do I file the air permit with LRAPA?
No, not from Marion County. LRAPA states that it issues air permits in Lane County, and that businesses outside Lane County receive air permits from Oregon DEQ. Marion County is not Lane County. A packet addressed to the Lane agency is the wrong counter. The heat-input bands themselves, 10 and 30 MMBtu per hour, are the DEQ bands.
Q3. Is this the same machine as a Willamette hop kiln?
No. A hop kiln dries cones, and the temperature evidence for aroma hops comes from an Oregon State University kilning dissertation, about 125 to 135°F. A farm-crop dehydrator in Marion County is a processing use under the zoning chapter. The fuel may be similar. The product, the setpoint, and the reason the URL exists are not. If you are drying hops, use the valley kiln note.
Q4. What fee should I budget?
The DEQ general-permit page used here describes Basic Permit 04 and General Permit 11 and does not, in those sections, print a dollar fee. This note will not invent one. If the site also has a steam boiler, ORS 480.595 and form 2502c do print vessel fees: $175 or $196 to install a boiler, and maximum annual operating fees of $110 or $55. Those vessel fees are not a dryer-burner diagnostic price.
Q5. Who signs the land-use side?
A facility for processing farm crops has to fit the county use. The owner or operator deals with planning for that use and with DEQ if the burner is a listed air source. The Building Codes Division enters if a boiler or pressure vessel is part of the plant. Three counters, three files. One of them is not LRAPA.

The statewide machine split is on the rule.

References

Accessed 9 October 2026 unless a page prints a later date.

Marion County Rural Zoning Code, chapter 17.136, exclusive farm use zone. codepublishing.com.
Oregon DEQ. Basic and General ACDP permits. oregon.gov/deq.
Lane Regional Air Protection Agency. Air permits for Lane County sources. lrapa-or.gov.
ORS 480.595 and BCD form 2502c. Statute, form.