Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 3, 1994 TAG: 9411030080
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In doing so, they have recognized both the river as a public resource, and the effect land use can have on the quality of this resource. They have taken, as well, an important step along the path of regional cooperation.
The county is the first to adopt an ordinance, but it has hardly acted alone. Its river-protection district is the result of seven years of work by planners from seven localities and the Fifth Planning District Commission, along with other interested citizens. In working together to write a model ordinance to take back to their respective jurisdictions, these people recognized their localities' interdependence.
The river follows its own course, irrespective of lines drawn on maps to separate towns from counties from cities. The quality of the river will affect all, and be affected by all. Management - or mismanagement - of the land along the river is an issue that must be tackled regionally.
So while the county's action is good news, it will gain in significance as other jurisdictions along the river, from its headwaters to Smith Mountain Lake, consider the planners' model ordinance, adapt it to differences in terrain and development, and pass protection overlay districts. These will do the most good in combination.
That there will be adaptations is a given. The localities share the river, but not the same features along its banks. The banks rise steeply where the river cuts through mountains, stretch gently where it flows across farmland. The banks are densely developed through the city of Roanoke, open countryside along long stretches in other localities.
But while adaptations are reasonable, even desirable, they should be done with more thought than was given to the changes that Roanoke County made.
The county's ordinance is a breakthrough; its supervisors can be deservedly proud for acting first to protect an important resource. But it is not nitpicking to note the arbitrary manner in which the breadth of the model ordinance was reduced from 750 feet on either side of the flood plain to 500 feet on either side of the river.
Along low land where the river can rise out of its banks to cover hundreds of thousands of feet during floods, that is a considerable change, made with apparently little or no consideration of its effect on river protection.
Fortunately, such specifics can be changed later if necessary, as supervisors Chairman Lee Eddy has noted. And the ordinance does provide real protections, the most critical being a vegetative buffer within 100 feet of the river to filter runoff. It also sets requirements for building setbacks and erosion and sediment control for land developed after Jan. 1.
Now it's up to governing boards in the cities of Roanoke and Salem, the town of Vinton and the counties of Montgomery, Bedford and Franklin to join in creating a river protection district that, like the river, ignores the little political lines on the map.
by CNB