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Material site work group hears proposed code changes

A working group looking into potential changes for the borough’s materials site code heard some staff recommendations at its most recent meeting.

The group began meeting earlier this month, and now has a goal of evaluating existing code to ensure that an appropriate balance exists to meet the need for affordable development while protecting quality of life for residents.

 

Staff from the borough planning department had a number of recommendations for the group to look at, ranging from how much money developers have to put down before they dig, to how a gravel pit is measured.

“This is kind of a biggy," said borough planning director Max Best.

 
"(Code) is reworded to require elevation of proposed excavation rather than the depth of excavation as typical landscaping inendates and goes up and down. How do you monitor, make sure, they’re not going to dig in the (ground) water? That’s what I’ve heard time and time again is how do you know. I have to go send people to the gravel pits and dig holes to see that there’s not water in there and that’s not something I want people to have to do.”

Measuring the pit relative to the groundwater level is the fix there. Other proposed changes are even more basic, like simply requiring a permitted area be clearly marked before any work begins to make natural buffers aren’t accidentally removed.

“That is a real life situation we’ve had to deal with, where we’ve gone out and said ‘what were you thinking? You just took down the 50 foot buffer.’ So now we’re stuck with what does that mean? The planning commission approved it, now you’ve got to modify your permit. You can’t put back a tree. It really strapped us for dealing with accidental things," Best said.

New hours of operation are also being looked at, along with noise level requirements, limiting operations to 60 decibels at the site boundary. That’s roughly the volume of background office music or the hum of an air conditioner from about 100 feet. There will be opportunities for public comment in the coming weeks. For now, those can be submitted via the borough’s website.