Riparian Buffer Protection Ordinances

This memo analyzes the legal authority for municipalities to adopt riparian buffer ordinances and considers what municipalities must do to ensure such ordinances are legally valid and defensible.

Pennsylvania's Title 25 "Environmental Protection", Part I "Department of Environmental Protection", Subpart C "Protection of Natural Resources", Article II "Water Resources", Chapter 102 "Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management" contains riparian buffer requirements for EV and HQ streams. These provisions were published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin on August 21, 2010 [40 Pa.B. 4861].

This excerpt from the EPA's website (as of 2011) provides model ordinance language to protect riparian buffers.

Guide highlights the benefits of riparian corridors and outlines components of their conservation, including acquisition, land-use controls, and stewardship.

Section of Kennett Township (Chester County) zoning ordinance that includes supplemental regulations for natural resources such as steep slopes, floodplains, wetlands, woodlands, and riparian buffers.

This model document, developed by CBF's Pennsylvania office, is intended to assist PA municipalities in adopting riparian buffer ordinances. The model reflects CBF's preferred vision of a local ordinance with comments, suggestions and options inserted throughout the document in italics.

An annotated model ordinance designed to protect riparian buffers and their associated water resources. It provides for two zones of protection.

These model ordinances provide examples for municipal governments to use as tools to incorporate sustainable land-use practices into their regulations.

Pennsylvania municipalities may ensure the protection and restoration of riparian buffers with their land use regulations. Local governments can adapt the Model Riparian Buffer Protection Overlay District to their particular circumstances. The model is accompanied by a letter from attorney Fronefield Crawford, Jr. attesting to the model’s legal defensibility and reasonableness vis-à-vis private property rights.

This guidance helps citizens and municipalities in urban areas protect bodies of water from polluted runoff that can result from everyday activities. These scientifically sound techniques are the best practices known today. The guidance will also help states to implement their nonpoint source control programs and municipalities to implement their Phase II Storm Water Permit Programs.

The purpose of this 68-page Public Policy Research Series paper is to support the efforts of local governments in Georgia that have made policy decisions to develop riparian buffer programs. It includes a model ordinance.

Ordinance establishes a riparian buffer overlay district in the City of Reading (PA).

The LVPC encourages the restoration of riparian buffers on lands that border rivers and streams whether they are privately owned or owned by local government via non-regulatory and regulatory means. The guide links scientific findings to proposed regulations and illustrates various riparian buffer concepts. The model regulations are designed as a section in a zoning ordinance.

This New Jersey model ordinance for protecting riparian buffers includes sections on permitted and prohibited uses in buffer zones, performance standards, etc.

Riparian buffers - forested or otherwise vegetated lands bordering water bodies - deliver tremendous water quality and other public benefits. Pennsylvania municipalities may ensure the protection and restoration of riparian buffers with their land use regulations.

Extensive scientific research documents that vegetated strips of land along waterways provide extensive water quality and other environmental and economic benefits.

The model landscaping regulations provided by the model, if adopted by municipalities, can help conserve and restore healthy soils, reduce the use of irrigation for landscapes, improve the quality of surface waters, reduce energy consumption, provide wildlife habitat, and protect and restore native plant communities. They can also assist in cleaning up impaired waters in both MS4 and non-MS4 municipalities.