Loudoun County Planning Staff will NOT recommend prohibiting any land uses from the Mountain Overlay District

Alert for Friends of the Blue Ridge Mountains

Loudoun County Planning Staff will NOT recommend prohibiting any land uses from the Mountain Overlay District

As you know, the decisions regarding Loudoun County’s new zoning ordinance are going to shape development in the Blue Ridge Mountains for decades to come.

Friends of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and many other likeminded community organizations have been working throughout 2022 to make sure that the new zoning ordinance prohibits certain types of inappropriate and intense land uses from the mountain slopes.

We now learn the County Planning Staff will not recommend prohibiting any of the types of development that we and others have identified as damaging to the mountain environment. The failure to prohibit the types of development that we have identified will permit significant new building in the mountains, permit cutting hundreds of acres of trees, compromise the ability of the mountains to clean our air and filter our water, and irreversibility change the nature of our beautiful mountain slopes.

In the detailed written comments Friends submitted to the planning staff during the public comment period we specifically identified 21 uses that should be prohibited in the Mountain Overlay District (MOD) and the reasons why they are inappropriate. These uses ranged from sawmills to retail to group housing. Click here to see the full list of uses to which FBRM formally objected.

According to a staff paper prepared for the Planning Commission, the staff, while acknowledging that public “comments indicate that there are too many uses allowed in rural zoning districts and within sensitive environmental overlays — Staff does not recommend eliminating land use allowances. Instead, the staff “anticipates that clearer and strengthened environmental and other requirements address this concern.”  

Over the coming weeks and months, Friends will continue to aggressively push for the Planning Commission, and ultimately for the Board of Supervisors, to reject the staff position and to prohibit uses that are inappropriate for the delicate Mountain environment.

We will keep you informed and be asking for your help.