Staff Writer 

Since 2006, the South Portland Zoning Improvement Committee has been working to amend  existing city ordinances to help make the city “green,” and allow developers and homeowners to keep their heads above water.

“It is our intention to bring a well balanced proposal forward,” City Councilor and Committee Chairman Maxine Beecher said. “We have to find something homeowners and landowners could live with but also help the environment.”

Last week, more than a year after considering a freshwater wetlands management program, South Portland Planning Board members were presented with proposed zoning amendments concerning 100-year floodplains, wastewater treatment requirements and shoreland zoning regulations.

Committee member and Planning Consultant Mark Eyerman, with the South Portland firm Planning Decisions, said a majority of the amendments to the city’s 100-year floodplain regulations were “housekeeping” measures to ensure residents would still be able to apply for flood insurance. 

“The city’s ordinance is 20 or 25 years old,” he said. “Bureaucrats have changed the way things are referred to.”

Included in the update is acknowledgement of a federal requirement to report building violations – which can include the use of inadequate construction materials, height levels and setbacks –  to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) floodplain insurance program. Planning board members Judy Carpenter and Mark Gandolfo were concerned the requirement could put some existing homeowners at risk of losing their insurance since City Attorney Sally Daggett said failing to report violations could cause the city to lose it’s eligibility for the federal insurance program.

“Even if [buildings within 100-year floodplains] are in violation now, we’ve never reported it before,” Gandolfo said. “Now if we have to find out, we have to report this.”

“Will [existing structures] be grandfathered?” Carpenter asked.

Eyerman said FEMA will only be notified of a violation if a building is modified to the point where it would require a building permit. 

“The city is not going to go out looking for people in the floodplain and pull permits. We only care if you’re expanding a home or building a new structure,” City Planner Tex Haeuser said. “The ‘floodplain police’ are not out there.”

Haeuser said proposed updates to the city’s storm water management regulations primarily focus on ensuring water treatment systems are monitored, something Eyerman said the city is already encouraging informally.

“This is to provide more environmental protection while following a South Portland middle path,” Haeuser said. “We anticipate this will comply with requirements from Long Creek [restoration plan] that property owners annually inspect their storm water systems and send that report to the city.”

Proposed updates to the city’s shoreland zoning regulations would expand the city’s stream protection district, which currently includes Trout Brook, Barbary Creek and Long Creek tributaries, to include Kimbell Brook and Anthoine Creek. Haeuser said a stream protection district requires performance standards for buildings within 75 feet of a stream and discourages new construction or expansions of existing buildings within 40 feet of a protected stream, although some residents say their homes are even closer to the water.

 “[Kimbell Brook] goes underneath my garage through a culvert,” resident John Higgins said. “What does that mean?”

The board unanimously agreed to positively endorse all of the amendments for city council passage, with the stipulation that they consider the effects on existing homes such as the Higgins residence. 

“For a while, we aired on the side of development and now we’re airing to the environment,” planning board member Don Russell said. “We may just need to get used to that.”

During the past three years, the nine-member Zoning Improvement Committee – charged with updating the city’s land use regulations, which had not been updated in 20 years – proposed amendments to zoning regulations and implemented a local freshwater wetlands management program, both of which Beecher said have been adopted by the city council. 

“You’ve already seen the wetland management [program], this is the second step,” Beecher said. 

Beecher said the proposed amendments, as endorsed by the planning board, could be discussed by the city council during workshops this month.