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2, <br /> 1 - c" b007 <br /> Amendments to the Orange County <br /> Stormwater Ordinance <br /> August 2001 <br /> NOTE: The underlined text will be added to the Ordinance and the struck-through text <br /> will be deleted. The attached Stormwater Ordinance amendments conform to <br /> requirements by NCDENR- Division of Water Quality, the Environmental Management <br /> Commission, and the NC Administrative Code, rules 15A 2B .0233 and .0241. These <br /> changes are the result of the State's -staff enforcement experience and the <br /> recommendations of their attorneys,and of Geoff Gledhill and Harmony Whalen. <br /> Section 2 Definitions <br /> For the purpose of this Ordinance,these terms shall be defined as follows: <br /> H. County- shall mean the Department within Orange County that the County <br /> Manager delegates authority to implement and enforcement Ordinance. <br /> Section 3 Riparian Area Protection within the Neuse River Basin <br /> The purpose of the County in adopting the following regulations is to protect the <br /> County's streams,wetlands, and floodplains; to protect the water quality of the County's <br /> watercourses,reservoirs, lakes, and ponds;to protect the County's riparian and aquatic <br /> ecosystems; and to provide environmentally sound use of the County's land resources. <br /> Buffers adjacent to streams provide multiple environmental protection and resource <br /> management benefits.Forested buffers enhance and protect the natural ecology of stream <br /> systems, as well as water quality through bank stabilization, shading, and nutrient <br /> removal (subsurface). Wildlife habitat is also provided within both forested and grassed <br /> buffers. They also help to minimize flood damage in flood prone areas. Grassed zones <br /> within the buffers help to prevent sediment and sediment-bound pollutants such as <br /> phosphorous from reaching the streams. <br /> A. Applicability <br /> This Ordinance shall apply to 50-foot wide riparian buffers directly adjacent to <br /> surface waters in the Neuse River Basin within Orange County(intermittent <br /> streams,perennial streams, lakes,ponds, and estuaries), excluding wetlands. <br /> Wetlands adjacent to surface waters or within 50 feet of surface waters will be <br /> considered as part of the riparian buffer but are regulated pursuant to North <br /> Carolina Administrative Code I 5A NCAC 2H .0506. The riparian buffers <br /> protected by this Ordinance shall be measured pursuant to Section 3-B. For the <br /> purpose of this Ordinance, a surface water shall be present if the feature is <br /> approximately shown on either the most recent version of the soil survey map <br /> prepared by the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the United States <br /> Department of Agriculture or the most recent version of the 1:24,000 scale (7.5 <br />