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A <br /> <br />Amendments to the grange 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 Coun <br />Mana er dele ates authori to im lement and enforcement Ordinance. <br />Sectian 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 flaodplains; 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 SO feet of surface waters will be <br />considered as part of the riparian buffer but are regulated pursuant to North <br />Carolina Administrative Code15A 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 ar the most recent version of the 1:24,000 scale (7.5 <br />