Riparian Buffer Protection Standards

Albemarle County is developing Riparian Buffer Protection Standards to protect and improve vegetation along rivers and streams, strengthen buffer requirements that were narrowed in 2014, and ensure consistency with Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act. This project is an outcome of the Stream Health Initiative, a program designed to improve surface water quality, established by the Board of Supervisors in 2017.

If adopted, the protection standards would:

• set requirements for retaining and protecting riparian vegetation and limiting land disturbance in buffers throughout the county
• protect and enhance all of the defined buffers, whether they’re part of a development project or not

Please note that these protection standards do not apply to agriculture and forestry.

Why is it important?

Riparian buffer vegetation is significant to stream health since it protects streams from erosion and filters out nutrients and sediment that can flow into streams and degrade water quality. This benefits both our community’s public water supply and aquatic habitats. Community benefits would include better water quality, fewer expenses for clearing out reservoirs affected by sedimentation, and healthier wildlife populations.

The County's current stream buffer regulations are housed in the Water Protection Ordinance (WPO) and only apply to land-disturbance projects that require erosion and sediment control plans(e.g., commercial and residential development projects). This means that a lot of activity that impacts stream buffers isn't currently regulated -- and that adds up. In short, the WPO buffer requirements only regulate specific larger projects. In contrast, the Riparian Buffer Protection Standards would regulate and protect all stream buffers in the county (except those used for agriculture and forestry).

While the proposed stream buffer regulations would be located in the Zoning Ordinance, this proposed draft also contains changes to the Water Protection Ordinance (to remove the current buffer requirements), and to make language related to buffers more consistent in the Subdivision Ordinance (chapter 14 of the County Code) and the Health and Safety ordinance (chapter 7).