Heather Buch and Jake Pelroy are barreling toward a Nov. 3 runoff for one of Lane County’s most politically competitive districts, which could determine the future of Lane County’s controversial CleanLane Resource Recovery Facility and the direction of county spending for the next four years. 

Buch, the incumbent, is running for a third four-year term representing District 5, the county’s sprawling geographic giant, which stretches from Cottage Grove and Creswell to Coburg, Oakridge, Blue River, Leaburg, Lowell, Marcola and Westfir. 

Buch is running again, hoping to see her current projects to fruition and to provide the representation she hopes to have in local government in face of Trumpian politics. 

“We’ve seen people run for office that are mimicking the Trump administration all the way down to our local level,” Buch says. “I was not willing to concede the role to somebody that I felt couldn’t represent me well and obviously, the rest of the community, well.”

Her challenger, Pelroy, who declined to be interviewed by the Eugene Weekly for this story, is a Marine veteran who has spent years as a political consultant serving as chief of staff for Republican state Sen. Bill Hansell from 2020 until 2025 and legislative assistant to Republican state Sen. Tim Knopp in 2013, both of whom are considered moderately conservative according to the Conservative Political Action Conference. 

County commission seats are nonpartisan, so not elected via partisan primary. Buch and Pelroy ran against each other in the May primary, where neither secured more than 50 percent of votes needed to win the seat. Pelroy ended with 12,176 (48.34 percent) votes, followed by Buch with 11,735 (46.59 percent) votes. Both candidates are affiliated with a party: Buch with the Democrats and Pelroy is a Republican, and their positions differ widely.  

The race is shaping up to be one of the most expensive races ever for a seat on the Lane County Board of Commissioners. Opposition to the waste and recycling facility, CleanLane, has become a centerpiece for Pelroy’s campaign.  

Pelroy co-founded and leads the Lane County Garbage and Recycling Association (LCGRA), which says it represents family-owned garbage and recycling haulers in Lane County. In written testimony, submitted to the Oregon Legislature in 2025, Pelroy explained that he became involved with the association because “my family owns a garbage business,” Ecosystems Transfers and Recycling. He wrote that his father started the company in 2000, with the goal of providing waste management services to rural communities.

Under his leadership, LCGRA aggressively opposed CleanLane by successfully lobbying to reject the project’s zoning permits. The association continues to fight the facility’s proposed relocation to the Short Mountain Landfill, according to a September 2026 filing made by LCRGA’s attorney Wendie L. Kellington. 

CleanLane is being funded in part through solid waste tipping fees paid by haulers and residents when they bring garbage to Lane County facilities. The county has approved additional fee increases to help pay for the project. Pelroy has argued that those higher fees threaten the viability of hauling companies represented by his association.

In an interview with the Eugene Weekly, Buch says she recognizes a real public concern over having enough waste to actually sustain the new facility. Buch says that private haulers, like Sanipac Waste Connections and EcoSort, which are internationally owned by the trash conglomerate Waste Connections, Inc., have been hauling Lane County garbage down to its privately owned landfill in Jackson County instead of the county’s Short Mountain Landfill, which pays fees for the entire waste management system. 

“I take that part very seriously, because we want to ensure that there’s enough flow going into the clean line facility for it to be successful and for a defense lab,” Buch says. 

Buch says the other commissioners and she are currently working with Sanipac Waste Connections to lower the tipping fees to make it more competitive. 

“Obviously that has gone on deaf ears so far, but it does affect all the other haulers, and it affects the rates of every person who has garbage service with a hauler,” Buch says. “We have to find some kind of resolution from an economic competitive perspective, but also ensuring that we’re protecting rates for consumers.”

CleanLane is not the only issue dividing the candidates. Public safety, affordability, wildfire management and land management processes are also central to the race, with both candidates offering different ideas about where the county should focus its resources. 

Buch says her approach to public safety is looking holistically at the criminal justice system. 

“I am very interested in looking at ways that we can increase the value of intervening earlier on before we get to the place where they’re in the criminal justice system,” Buch says. 

For Buch, that means increasing mobile crisis teams for mental health emergencies, improving 911 response times and opening new health care clinics across the county. 

Pelroy has focused instead on prioritizing existing funds towards law enforcement, according to his campaign website. 

The difference reflects a larger divide in the race: Buch is campaigning to build upon her established initiatives, while Pelroy is running on a platform to change the commission’s spending priorities.

The results of the race could affect the direction of future commission votes.  Two commissioners, Buch and Laurie Trieger, are registered Democrats. Two others are middle-of-the-road voters: Pat Farr is registered as an Independent, and Sean VanGordon, who isn’t registered under a party, will take over the seat held by Republican David Loveall. Ryan Ceniga, the final member of the board, is a registered Republican. Ceniga and Lovell have voted in sync, as have Buch and Trieger, and Farr has been a swing vote.

If Pelroy replaced Buch, it could result in a board leaning more conservative on votes on land use, CleanLane, law enforcement and more.