Agenda - Planning Commission - 04/07/1998

Home

Z.B. March 25, 1998 Page 5 Given the state's repeated expression of its intent to establish and maintain rail trails, granting local authorities the power to impose their individual zoning schemes over these inter-jurisdictional transportation corridors would frustrate the Legislature's intent to preserve essential rail corridors and to allow for rail trail uses in the interim. If every governing body along a transportation corridor could exercise its individual zoning authority on rail trails, building and main- taining such corridors would be virtually impossible.. The trails association and users of the trail were still subject to reasonable local public health and safety regulations. The township could, for example, provide for the enforcement of criminal and civil laws, the construction and maintenance of fencing, and noise limitations.. see also:Rental Property Owners Association v. Grand Rapids, 566 N.W. 2d 514 (1997). Accessory Use- Quarry wants to build asphalt plant as accessory use in residential district Greenback Crushed Stone Inc. v. Loudon County Commission, Court of Appeals of Tennessee, Western Section, at Knoxville, No. 03A01-9706-00207 (1998) Greenback Crushed Stone Inc. owned and operated a rock quarry in Loudon County, Tenn. The quarry was in a Rural Residential District. The subsurface extraction of natural mineral resources, such as Greenback's quarry, was permitted as a special exception in districts zoned rural residential. The county's zoning laws also allowed accessory uses that were "customarily incidental to the permitted principal uses" in a district. Greenback applied for a special exception allowing it to run an asphalt plant as an accessory use to its rock quarry. The county Board of Zoning Appeals had denied a similar request Greenback had submitted. This time, the county planning commission recommended to the county commission that it pass legislation stating that concrete and asphalt plants weren't permitted accessory uses in rural residential districts. The county commission published notice of a public hearing to discuss an amendment that stated "concrete and asphalt plants/facilities are not considered an accessory use" to the "subsurface extraction of natural mineral resources." At the hearing, several residents expressed concern over allowing an industrial use like an asphalt plant in a rural area characterized by residential and agricultural uses. They were concerned an asphalt plant would result in increased large truck traffic through residential streets, dust emissions from the plant itself, and water runoff containing plant wastes. The director of the Office of Planning and Community Development said that even if the zoning amendment was passed, asphalt plants would still be allowed as permitted uses in industrial districts. A salesperson for a furnace manufacturer spoke on behalf of Greenback. He said modern technologies kept dust emissions from asphalt plants to a minimum, and that contaminated water runoff wouldn't be a problem because