Crow Wing County Board approves reduced buffer zones on developed lakes – Brainerd Dispatch

BRAINERD — With an eye toward protecting water quality and reducing lakeshore erosion, Crow Wing County voted to establish a no-mainentance buffer if someone seeks a shoreline recreational use permit.

It’s a narrow effect and limited in scope and before commissioners voted on a 25-foot buffer, the recommendation was to make the buffer smaller.

Chris Pence, environmental services manager, was recently before the board with a recommendation for a no-maintenance buffer of 25 feet for general development, recreational development and natural environment lakes.

Reducing the buffer to 10 feet came up quickly Tuesday, Dec. 30, but was also mentioned in a previous session without a lot of feedback from the board.

When the county needed to update language in a land use ordinance amendment for clarity and to meet state requirements related to septics, the Planning Commission made a recommendation for a couple of changes for consideration. One was using

buffer requirements

for certain types of permits that require shore operations. The idea was if people sought a permit for intensive vegetation removal for a shoreline recreational use permit on 30% of their shoreline, for a beach for example, the other 70% would be put into a 25-foot no-maintenance buffer.

Tuesday, Dec. 30, Pence recapped the discussion and then recommended reducing the buffer to 10 feet for the more heavily developed lakes classified as general development and recreational development.

Commissioner Paul Koering said he was going to vote no on the whole package but with Pence’s adjustment would support the 10-foot no-maintenance buffer. Pence said the 10-foot buffer, triggered only by a permit, would be for completely developed lakes that have been developed for many years.

Commissioner Jon Lubke continued to raise concerns at the changes and whether that would reduce protections for natural environmental lakes that have retained natural shorelines. Pence said the protections would actually be strengthened because the current ordinance requires 25 feet and the change would mean a need to retain a total of 75 feet on natural envionment lakes if the shore impact zone was also calculated with it.

Currently, the county standard for general development and recreational development lakes is designed to prevent people from intensively clear-cutting and removing vegetation in the shoreland impact zone. The natural environment lake requires a 25 foot buffer but the language isn’t written so property owners are required to restore it if it’s going down to the water’s edge. If new language was adopted, Pence said it would be more restrictive on natural environment lakes than it is now.

Lubke said an issue with the language is that when they say no maintenance.

“No maintenance could be a set of hostas all the way down to the lake,” Lubke said.

Pence agreed.

“No maintenance is a situation where they’ve been mowing grass on the water’s edge for 50 years, and it’s an improvement in that situation to say we just would like you to stop mowing down and leave some vegetation by your shoreline,” Pence said.

Lubke said it was hard to shake the idea in his head that they were not going backward on natural environment lake protections.

Pence sketched out the idea on a sheet of paper for the current ordinance for undisturbed properties. On a general development lake, Pence said protections are for the first 37.50 feet away from the lake, for recreational development it’s the first 50 feet from the lake that is protected and for a natural environment lake it’s 25 feet.

“So we’re protecting, instead of 25 feet, we’re protecting 75 feet,” Pence said of the change on natural environment lakes. For the developed lakes where clearing activity predated ordinances, they are looking at slowing pollutants by keeping a 10-foot buffer and would continue the 25-foot buffer on natural environment lakes.

Lubke said a natural shoreline wouldn’t have hostas down to the shoreline. Pence said no maintenance doesn’t look like a land lot with existing vegetation and trees but applies to the situation where all the trees have been removed.

“I’ve talked with DNR staff about this,” Pence said. “They’re pretty excited. They think this is going to be a massive improvement over what we have.”

Commissioner Jamie Lee sought and received clarification that nothing would change for those who are already grandfathered in.

The board voted 4-1 in favor of the change with Lubke opposed.