SUNSET — After a year of gathering input from residents, business owners and conservationists, among others, a Comprehensive Shorelands Plan for the area along the eastern shores of the Great Salt Lake has been completed.
The plan was presented to leaders from throughout Davis County at a Davis County Council of Governments meeting Wednesday night in Sunset.
Last May, the COG agreed to sponsor a committee to oversee the creation of the plan, which outlines possible uses for the little remaining open space in the area. COG provided $15,000 to hire a consultant for the committee, and Envision Utah, the Nature Conservancy and the Utah Reclamation, Mitigation and Conservation Commission helped with staffing and cost of the yearlong project, which was expected to be roughly $250,000.
To get a variety of opinions, each of the cities with land bordering the Great Salt Lake were asked to invite 100 residents to attend one of the three planning meetings over the past year. And the county took the initiative to invite representatives from environmental groups as well as state and local leaders.
The mix included developers, Realtors, farmers, conservationists, residents, duck club members, Sierra Club members and elected officials.
"We just tried to get every possible group of stakeholders at the table," said Farmington Mayor Greg Bell, who helped organize the shorelands committee. Bell said the finished plan is "extremely attractive."
The plan details which areas should serve as agricultural buffers, which land should be used as a buffer between a city's edge and the shorelands and the defining line in each community where development should end. The planned Legacy Highway should become the "defining edge separating preservation from development" in most parts of the southern end of the county, the plan states.
"People complain that Legacy will promote more development, when in fact it's going to stop development from going farther west," said Bill Wright, a planning manager from Sear Brown.
Although the plan only serves as a strong suggestion and is not binding, community leaders have been closely involved in the planning process and are being urged to incorporate the shorelands plan into their city's general plan. The shorelands planning committee has already begun presenting the plan to each city bordering the lake, and consultants and planners have offered to help cities come up with ways to adopt the shorelands plan principles.
The values detailed in the final plan are wetlands, agriculture, recreation, open space and compatible development.
Cities can protect land by using federal money to assist landowners who want to keep wetlands, learning to write ordinances or transferring development rights, among other things, consultant Brad Barber told the COG.
The proposal for the Comprehensive Shorelands Plan says it is a way to "work together to identify which parts of the area residents would like to see remain agriculture, which wetland and natural areas need to be protected, where parks, trails and greenways might be located and where appropriate development may occur."
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