This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In the works since Peter Corroon was Salt Lake County's mayor, a draft ordinance updating county standards for development in the canyons and foothills is, at long last, before the Salt Lake County Council for consideration.
The FCOZ ordinance (as the Foothills and Canyons Overlay Zone is known) was handed to the council last week along with a separate proposal to create a mountain resort zone specifically for the ski areas in the Cottonwood canyons.
Having taken so long to get this far, council members expressed reluctance to act quickly on the ordinances, knowing full well that canyon issues generate many competing perspectives.
"The decisions we make on this are absolutely critical," said Councilman Jim Bradley. "It will take the wisdom of Solomon on many of these issues to find something acceptable and meet the goal of protecting what we have here."
His colleagues agreed and asked the planning staff to return in early January with more details, including input from planning-commission members who spent years poring over the ordinance line by line.
"I've spent more than 500 hours on those two ordinances," said Tod Young, a member of the Mountainous Planning Commission that oversees land-use issues in the canyons. "I hope you don't get wrapped around that same axle."
Whatever happens, Young called the proposed ordinances "monumental work" by planning staffer Curtis Woodward and deputy district attorney Zach Shaw.
Woodward said the process grew out of the county's collaboration with Envision Utah in 2009 on the "Wasatch Canyons Tomorrow" report.
Its recommendations spawned studies of transportation in and around the canyons, work coordinated by the Mountain Accord process, plus a consultant's review of the county's FCOZ ordinance, first adopted in 1997.
The consultant did not find major problems with FCOZ, which puts extra requirements on top of usual land-use practices in sensitive mountain and foothill zones. However, the consultant firm suggested an update was in order. So in 2012, Corroon appointed a blue-ribbon commission of 15 diverse people interested in canyon issues to chart a direction.
The mountain resort zone was this group's idea for dealing with issues unique to the county's four ski areas, Woodward said. The commission also encouraged the county to adopt an FCOZ ordinance that was broadly "balanced between private property rights, environmental protection and watershed protection."
For years now, planning commissioners like Young set out to do that. They devised and revised standards for building on slopes, site access, trails, fences, trees and vegetative protection, natural hazards, proximity to stream corridors, impacts on wildlife, limiting areas of disturbance in construction zones and applying design standards so structures blend into their surroundings.
"It was an amazing process," said Save Our Canyons Executive Director Carl Fisher, as it should be because the ordinances will "set the stage for how the canyons look when my young children take their children into the canyons."
The FCOZ proposal before the council, he said, has "resolved a number of the issues but not all."
Fisher applauded enforcement provisions that would make it more unlikely a developer could cut down trees illegally, as occurred in the Silver Fork area of Big Cottonwood Canyon last year.
The ordinance should "encourage people to ask permission and not just ask for forgiveness," he said, also expressing hope that consideration for wildlife interests will curtail growth of a list of animals extinct in the Wasatch, such as lynx, otters, cuckoos and grizzly bears.
"We'd like to try to not add to that robust list of species that have been lost and would like to try to bring back some," Fisher said, tagging protection of streamside habitat as invaluable to those efforts.
Millcreek Canyon resident Ed Marshall, however, asked the council not to go overboard with the restrictions FCOZ imposes.
He argued that science supports his position that the setbacks between buildings and streams don't need to be as extensive as Fisher would want. Marshall also felt the ordinance's limits on how much of a parcel can be disturbed by construction were onerous.
"Carl's interest is wildlife," Marshall said. "Our interests are the people who live and own property in the canyons. … I hope you take people into account rather than grizzlies or lynx."
The draft ordinances also drew praise from two other long-time participants.
Barbara Cameron from the Big Cottonwood Canyon Community Council called the FCOZ draft "historic," and was especially pleased by the consistency it brings to addressing canyon wildfire issues.
Jeff Silvestrini, who will become mayor of the new Millcreek City on Jan. 3, said ordinance provisions come close to what city residents want for the east-bench interface between neighborhoods and nature.
Woodward said the Salt Lake County Council will have to work out an unforeseen issue about defining ski-resort boundaries.
Planners had assumed those boundaries would coincide with the resorts' special-use permits from the U.S. Forest Service, he said, but found out belatedly there are differences, mostly involving base facilities on private land beyond Forest Service control.
Resolving this issue is critical to Fisher.
"We don't want these entire canyons to become just ski resorts," he said, also challenging the appropriateness of letting resorts develop Alpine slides, mountain coasters and zip lines in the canyons.