Last Monday night, The Fairburn

City Councilmen approved a Watershed Protection Ordinance.

According to City Administrator

Jim Williams, the Watershed Protection Ordinance promotes good site planning

and properly protects the watershed areas within the city of Fairburn.

The recommended ordinance contains several key elements:

All streams, bodies of water,

detention/retention areas, 100-year flood plains, wetlands or other state

waters, and their required watershed protection buffers, which are included

on a tract of a proposed development project or adjacent to such tract,

shall be platted and dedicated to the city as permanent open space, and

shall not be used in the calculation of required open space for the tract

or in determining the net density of a proposed residential cluster project

within a Greenspace Overlay zoning district.

The finished floor elevation

of any structure adjacent to a 100-year floodplain must be at least three

feet above the level of that floodplain.