By Brian Shane

Staff Writer

State officials are almost done redrawing of the boundaries of Worcester County’s most environmentally sensitive areas, meaning some landowners will see increased governmental protection overlaid onto their property.

However, landowners won’t be affected directly unless they want to proceed with some kind of redevelopment, according to Lisa Hoerger, a regulation and mapping coordinator with the state’s Critical Area Commission. She explained the process Nov. 6 at a meeting of the Worcester County Commissioners.

“Some people are already in the Critical Area and they’re getting a little bit more. Some people are coming out of the Critical Area. Then, there’s people who, for the first time, might be in the Critical Area,” Hoerger said.

The 1,000-foot ribbon of land along tidal shorelines, created in 1984 by state law, gets its name from being a “critical area” of impact to the health of Chesapeake Bay, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources. In this buffer zone, development is restricted, and builders must follow strict rules to ensure development doesn’t harm the Chesapeake or the coastal bays of the Atlantic Ocean.

While the state has oversight, 16 Maryland counties and 44 municipalities bordering water are tasked with local enforcement of their own policies to protect the Critical Areas. (Landlocked counties in central and western Maryland do not participate.)

At first, the Critical Area’s borderline was cobbled together from 1960s-era aerial photography, meaning the boundary was already outdated by the time it became law. The General Assembly’s eventual solution to that came in 2008, when legislators ruled that Critical Area boundaries – every last inch of them – had to be updated.

That Herculean task is about to end. After more than 15 years, Worcester is the final county to have its Critical Area boundaries redrawn, “so you all have that distinction,” Hoerger told the county commissioners.

When denoting the shoreline – meaning, the edge of open water at low tide – cartographers have more tools at their disposal as opposed to their Nixon-era counterparts. Tidal borders are based on not just aerial images, but topography, color infrared imagery, LiDAR, and on-site verification.

For now, the updated Critical Area resulted in a net loss of 377 acres of protected area for Worcester County, officials said.

One of the largest Critical Area gains for Worcester County is at the border of Somerset County along Dividing Creek, according to Ryan Mello, with Salisbury University’s Eastern Shore Regional GIS Cooperative. He also spoke at the Nov. 6 meeting.

The county’s most depleted part of the Critical Area, data shows, is between Porters Crossing Road and Whitons Crossing Road – which may have originally been an error, Mello said.

“They have mapped the tidal limit too far,” he said. “Beyond Porters Crossing, we went out there and confirmed that area is non tidal. It may have just naturally transitioned or been an error to begin with. But all of that is being pulled out of the Critical Area.”

Mello added that the Critical Area also grew around the corporate limits of Berlin, and ebbed around Pocomoke State Park, near the county’s southern border at the Virginia state line.

“Anybody whose property gets a gain of one percent or more, their property will get a letter of notice. No matter what, if you have a gain, you get that letter, so you know where the new proposed boundary will be,” he said.

There will be a public meeting in January for approximately 994 affected property owners. After that, state and local staffers will review the maps, before turning them over to county officials for local adoption. The map itself becomes a matter of public record, available online for anyone to view.

Future development or redevelopment is subject to Critical Area requirements. Property owners who want to build must first fill out a special form at the county level, detailing their plans.

Proposed Critical Area

Worcester County

57,294 acres

Chesapeake Total 14,927

Atlantic Total 42,366

Critical Area Gains 3,185

Chesapeake Total 1,921

Atlantic Total 1,264

Critical Area Losses 3,652

Chesapeake Total 2,605

Atlantic Total  957

Net Change   (-377)

Chesapeake Total (-684)

Atlantic Total 307

Properties to be notified 994

Chesapeake Total  186

Atlantic Total 808