Surrey city council has voted to amend the city’s streamside protection policy to require all watercourse setbacks to align with provincial and federal requirements.
Coun. Doug Elford said the move will provide “more clarity” as it meets a standard regulation that everybody can understand. Coun. Linda Annis added, “We hear so many times about applications getting delayed around streams and ditches and all of this and I think this just provides much more clarity.”
Don Luymes, Surrey’s general manager of planning and development, presented a related corporate report to council on March 11.
“It’s not a simple thing,” he advised council, to ensure the setbacks are consistent with provincial requirements because the provincial manual for determining setbacks is more complicated than the city’s process, which is “almost intentionally kind-of simple.”
“There will be some work back-and-forth with provincial staff to determine what exactly those setbacks will be enshrined in our zoning bylaw,” Luymes noted.
Council granted second-reading approval to a related bylaw and then set a public hearing for 7 p.m. April 8.
Luymes noted in his report that the effect new provincial housing legislation has in allowing more density in most zones “will place added pressure on riparian areas to provide tree canopy and natural infiltration.”
He concluded that council’s direction will “significantly reduce” the number of development applications that “trigger” a Sensitive Ecosystems Development requirement and will “streamline the processing of applications without compromising important environmental and public interest values.”