The Environmental Planning Section's focus during the development planning process is to protect and preserve the county's natural resources while seeking to balance growth and development. The Environmental Planning Section accomplishes this by reviewing a project's civil and landscape plan set which may include:
- Wetland Delineation Report
- Wetland Mitigation Plan
- Wetland Buffer Enhancement Plan
- Threatened and Endangered Biological Survey Report
- Best Management Practices Plan
- Erosion and Sediment Control Plan
- Well Management Plan
This Section also ensures that landscape plans include tree protection measures, accurate tree replacement ratios, roadway landscape buffers, perimeter landscape buffers, and vehicle use area landscaping. Environmental Planning Section staff monitor and manage residential street tree requirements as well as conduct exotic, nuisance species removal inspections, silt fence staking and screening inspections, and wetland buffer enhancement or wetland mitigation inspections.
The balance of growth and development is accomplished through reviewing and addressing all of the submitted natural resource related documents during the entire project review process and providing comments to the Planning Department Case Manager which are then included within a larger comment report provided to the applicant.