Worcester County will no longer have two Critical Area Program codes on the books following a county commissioners’ vote to combine the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area program regulations with regulations for the Atlantic coastal bays and its watershed.
A watershed area in Worcester County is pictured.
File photo
By Stewart Dobson, Editor
Worcester County will no longer have the distinction of two Critical Area Program codes following the county commissioners’ vote to combine the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area program regulations with those for the Atlantic coastal bays and its watershed.
The county has had a pair of critical areas development and conservation rules since 2002, when the Maryland Department of Natural Resources recognized that Worcester’s coastal bays needed the same protections codified for the Chesapeake in the Critical Areas Act of 1984.
The state’s action resulted in the creation of a second set of rules for the coastal bays, even though many of the provisions were virtually identical.
Acknowledging that on July 2, county Natural Resources Administrator Brian Soper told the commissioners that the merger of the two codes was a matter of simplifying the law as part of the county’s comprehensive update of the programs designed to protect waterways and wetlands habitat from development and other aspects of nearby populations.
The combined bill stipulates what can and can’t be done in the “critical area” around or leading into any body of water, tidal or non-tidal that feeds into the Chesapeake and coastal bays.
The county bill approved last week was initially presented to the commissioners in late May and then submitted for review by the commission, which called for some minor changes.
Although some clarifications and modifications are included in the update, Soper said the rules remain the same.
With no public comment offered, commissioner President Chip Bertino closed the meeting and called for the vote, with all the commissioners voting in favor of the move.