Defend The Blue Ridge #1 Enforcement

Dear Friends of the Blue Ridge Mountains,

Loudoun County is in the process of writing a new zoning ordinance. A part of the new ordinance sets regulations for development in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the ordinance this is known as the Mountain Development Overlay District (MDOD) and the regulations are in Section 4.04.

What can you do?

The draft zoning ordinance is open for public comment until July 18^th. FBRM as an organization has already submitted detailed information about our concerns: Click here

Now the county needs to hear directly from its citizens – directly from you.

How do you take action?

FBRM has strong concerns about 4 areas of the ordinance we’ll address over 4 weeks:

1. Inadequate enforcement in the MDOD
2. The uses that would be permitted in the MDOD are inappropriate for the mountain environment
3. The definition of the MDOD
4.  The criteria used to evaluate proposed development in the MDOD

This week’s instructions apply to: 1) Inadequate enforcement in the MDOD. We will provide detailed instructions on the other three areas of concern in future emails.

There are four steps to objecting to inadequate zoning enforcement in the MDOD.

STEP #1 — Review the following language:

Zoning enforcement within the MDOD should be guided by two principals: 1) The penalties for serious zoning violation should be sufficiently robust to discourage violation and not simply become a cost of doing business. 2) The penalties for serious zoning violations should require the violator to return the land to the condition it was in before the violation. It is not sufficient to stop the violation. The land must be returned to its original condition.

Specific wording changes include the following:

• Section 7.13 B. 3. Zoning Administrator must take action to remove any violation or attempted violation of this Zoning Ordinance.
• Section 7.13 B. 6. a. The Zoning Administrator will specify a reasonable time for the violation to cease and for the land to be fully returned to pre-violation condition. 
• Section 7.13E.10.b. In order to determine that a violation has been corrected the zoning administrator must determine that the land has been returned to pre-violation condition.

STEP #2 – Make changes to the wording – the Zoning Department counts identical comments submitted as one comment.

COPY YOUR REVISED wording FOR PASTEING IN STEP #4 BELOW.

Step #3 – Go to the submit comment section of the draft ordinance.

1. Click here to view the Zoning Ordinance
2. That will take you to the entire draft Zoning Ordinance. On the left of the page is the table of contents.
3. In the Table of Contents, click on Chapter 7 – Procedures, click on section 7.13 Zoning Enforcement.
4. Once you are at Section 7.13 Zoning Enforcement click the vertical comments tab between the table of contents and the document.

Step # 4 – Fill out your name and email address on the form.

Copy the recommendations  – as you have re-worded it — into the comment section. Hit submit

Congratulations you are done! You have now officially and formally submitted your comments on Zoning enforcement in the MDOD.

Instructions on how to comment on the other sections of the MDOD regulations that are of concern to FBRM are contained in subsequent emails over the next 3 weeks. 

Questions?  Email us at info@friendsofblueridge.org

Thanks so much for making this effort to protect the Blue Ridge!

Peter Weeks

President, Friends of the Blue Ridge Mountains