By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

Golf course fairways and greens right next to rivers and streams will be a relic of the past under new environmental regulations under consideration by the Fayette County Planning Commission.

The commission is ready for your comments on the proposed rules. During last week's work session, the group decided to put the three new laws on its June 1 agenda for a public hearing and possible vote.

The meeting will be at 7 p.m. at the County Administrative Complex.

The proposed laws are designed to protect Fayette's watershed areas, its wetlands/floodplains and its groundwater recharge areas.

Many of the provisions being proposed are already in Fayette's development regulations, but new state laws provide a new format for environmental protection and require counties to fit their ordinances into it.

One change, said senior planner Pete Frisina, is in how developers are required to measure the required buffers.

Land disturbance must be at least 1,000 feet from local streams, and the new ordinances require that the distance be measured from the stream bank. Under current law, it's measured from the stream center.

Recreational uses permitted in the buffers and setbacks also would change. Under the proposed regulations, golf courses would have to be just as far away from streams as other types of development.

“Golf courses require a lot of grading, pesticides and fertilizer and stuff like that,” said county engineer Dave Borkowski. Many courses have greens right next to streams, he said.

If the new regulations are approved, fairways and greens will have to be 1,000 feet back. The only recreation allowed in buffer areas will be passive uses like walking trails and picnic areas.

Commission members questioned rules that livestock be kept 450 feet back from stream banks, but Frisina said that provision is already in effect in Fayette.

Most of Fayette's farms were in existence before that regulation was enacted, he said, and are therefore exempt. Future farms will have to keep the animals out of the streams, though, he said. “It creates erosion of the stream bank, plus there's the fecal coliform problem.”

State law requires that a new comprehensive plan be in place by the end of this year containing environmental provisions that are at least as restrictive as those in state law, said Frisina. Fayette's proposed law is more restrictive than the state's, he added.

The proposals are redundant, Frisina admitted, but he said that's necessary in order to meet the state's requirements.

County attorney Bill McNally wondered how far the state might go in controlling local governments. “One of these days we're going to be sending our kids to the state to make sure they look like they want them to look,” he quipped.