CR Planning

CR Planning, working with the Northland Non-point Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) program and the Minnesota Erosion Control Association, created four model ordinances for local governments that demonstrate how local officials can protect lake and river water quality through traditional land use regulation. The NEMO program is a national effort to educate local officials on the science linking land use decisions to changes in the community’s natural water resources. Non-point pollution, carried by stormwater runoff, is the primary cause of excessive nutrient flow and sedimentation that degrades the water quality in many of our lakes and rivers.

The project was to create new ordinance language with annotated explanations and alternatives to address the myriad situations faced by cities, counties, and towns. The annotated language incorporates NEMO land use principles in four specific ordinances used by many local governments:

• Stormwater Management Ordinance;
• Erosion and Sediment Control Ordinance;
• Shoreland Ordinance; and,
• Subdivision Ordinance.

Each ordinance is integrated with the other ordinances and offers regulatory solutions that address non-point pollution dilemmas faced by local governments. Each ordinance is also accompanied by text that explains the new language and how the language can be adapted to meet the particular natural resource base, statutory authority, and urban/rural context of individual local governments.

The ordinances are accompanied by a detailed educational presentation on how to incorporate NEMO land use policies into local regulation. The NEMO project is now conducting pilot testing of the educational effort, the applicability of the model ordinances, and the usefulness of the ordinance annotations.

Jean Coleman, CR Planning, serves on the Steering Committee for the Twin Cities area NEMO project. More information on the Northland NEMO project can be found at: www.seagrant.umnedu/water/nemo.html

National NEMO website: http://nemo.uconn.edu/national/index.htm