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Oregon’s Clatsop County is taking legal action against one of its own cities, Astoria, over whether the county or the city owns land in a nearby city, Warrenton.

The county board of commissioners on Wednesday voted to file a suit in Clatsop County Circuit Court to press its claim that the county owns two lots in Warrenton that it deeded to the city of Astoria in 1958. The county needs the lots, which total about 46 acres, in order to meet federal wetland mitigation requirements for the development of a business park nearby.

The county deeded the property to Astoria so that the city could use the property as a scenic backdrop to a cemetery located right next to the properties that the city owns. But according to the 1958 clause, “the above described property to be used for Cemetery Purposes, and if not so used to revert to Clatsop County and the city to reconvey accordingly.”

Clatsop County officials are claiming that because Astoria did not dedicate the land for cemetery use, the city did not meet the deed requirements, and the property should be given back to the county. The process is known as a revisionary clause, and Clatsop County has won a similar suit against the city of Seaside in 2009.

The county needs the land to fulfill federal wetland mitigation requirements due to the development of the nearby North Coast Business Park. As part of the business park, the county is widening a road that will require development that impacts nearby wetlands. Under federal law, the county must conduct 10 acres of off-site wetland mitigation for every acre that is developed. For this project, the county would need 43 acres of mitigation.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Oregon Department of State Lands, the two groups that regulate wetland protection in the state, have ruled out all of the other county-owned lands for potential mitigation sites. Without these parcels, the county would need to purchase wetland properties to meet the federal regulations.

Once the suit is filed, the case will be heard by a judge within the county court system. The ruling could then be appealed as far as to the Oregon Court of Appeals, which was the case in the 2009 suit against Seaside.