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236 <br />ON Chapter 6: Natural and Cultural Systems Element <br />Name of Study <br />Year <br />Find in s /Results <br />impervious limits) in 1992. <br />State Watershed <br />1991 <br />Examined proposed state minimum <br />Protection Rules and <br />rules. After rules changed, County opted <br />Implications for <br />to keep original more protective <br />County <br />standards in place. <br />-Orange <br />Cane Creek <br />1999 <br />Stringent land use controls needed to <br />Watershed Technical <br />protect against future <br />Study <br />degradation /sedimentation. Led to land <br />use controls (lot size, impervious limits), <br />with some open s ace provisions. <br />,Jordan Lake <br />2004 <br />Technical study for large regional lake <br />Watershed Technical <br />and <br />focused on areas of concern - including <br />Study and Proposed <br />ongoing <br />Upper New Hope Arm (southeast <br />Nutrient Management <br />Orange). Proposed reductions in <br />Rules <br />nitrogen (25 %) and phosphorus (5 %) <br />currently being considered. <br />The ultimate result of the many technical studies and state watershed <br />rules is that much of the County's land area is comprised of small to <br />medium sized water supply watersheds, which by their nature require <br />special protection measures. The limited potential for future water <br />supply sources makes increased protection of the existing sources and <br />better characterization of the fractured crystalline rocks all the more <br />critical. All of the County's major water supply watersheds have been <br />the subject of technical studies, except for the Upper Eno watershed. <br />This watershed has been the subject of conservation studies, but a full <br />technical study has not been undertaken. <br />The County's overall approach to watershed protection, as noted in the <br />introduction, is to pursue a non - structural approach. This involves <br />protection of water quality at the source, by using land use measures <br />to control impervious surface, the number of housing units (and hence <br />wastewater systems), the infiltration of stormwater on -site, and the <br />protection of stream buffers to further filter water as it moves from the <br />watershed to the stream corridors. <br />Minimum lot size limits help achieve the goal of limiting human <br />impacts and is a broad tool that is widely in use. Accompanying limits <br />on the amount of land that can be impervious to water infiltration helps <br />reduce sheet flow runoff into streams and encourage infiltration into <br />the soil. <br />Orange County's stream buffer provisions are a key component of the <br />County's watershed protection approach. Implemented through the <br />Zoning Unified Development Ordinance, the overall size and width of <br />protected stream buffers are based on a calculation that takes into <br />consideration the slope of the land and the existing vegetative cover <br />along an identified water body. At a minimum, stream buffers are <br />required to be fifty (50) feet in width along both sides of a stream, with <br />an additional fifteen (1 5) or thirty (30) feet of protected buffer required <br />0ra.vi1ye.,Ccvnty Coinpre-hensive,Pla*V Page 6 -80 <br />