BOARD01914

• Board Meeting Date: 12/4/1974
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

minimum standards and the county or municipality involved can make more
restrictive standards.

Mrs. Wright: Yes. I do understand that. but it is very much 'of a guide-
line and it is at the state level that we need directicn because you
are less involved in the pressures of land use control at the local
level. Mr. Sparks mentioned this at the earlier meeting. We find in
all local building codes, the zoning restrictions. minimums become I
maximums. If you would build a building for instance and the architect
wants to have a higher load on it than the specific code requires, the
owner would say, "Well look, I don't need to spend that kind of money
to be able to carry an extra load of snow or water or what .have you,
because the codes don I t require it. II This is precisely the same thing
that happens in land use control. the minimums become the maximums. So
we desperately need strong guidance from the state level to help us at
the local level.

Mr. Stapleton: All right, thank you very much.

I think Mr. Sparks would like to respond to a couple of points and then
we will call on ~~. Ken Wright, who also has to leave by 2:00 p.m.

Mr. Sparks: Your point was well taken, Mrs. Wright. that we are less
subject to local pressure. We know that local pressure is very intense.
developers on one hand and people who are opposed to unrestricted
development on the other hand. We are somewhat isolated from the local
problems.

Your point about the cumulative effect has been considered. We think
that automatically the cumulative effect is taken into consideration
when a permit for any building is being considered. As a practical
matter. in a high hazard area this regulation prohibits any type of
building from going in. We considered that any type of structure put
in the floodplain in the high hazard area has a decided effect upon the
floodplain. What we are talking about in this cumulative effect is in
the low hazard area. At any given moment when a structure is planned,
the only thing we must consider is what is there at that time. Auto-
matically the cumulative effect is always taken into consideration. It
has to be in our opinion.

You mentioned the lower floor. You brought this up before. and we
changed that. We also put in provisions for floodproofing. For
instance. if it is a basement. which is the lowest floor. it must be
floodproofed. So we did expand on that. Much of this has been done in
cooperation with federal agencies, but there is no common agreement I
even among the federal agencies. We are having a lot of trouble coordi-
nating with the federal agencies, the FIA on one hand for instance,
the USGS. the Soil Conservation Service, the Corps of Engineers. They
have different criteria among themselves. One of our jobs is to try
to pull that together into common criteria.

On your point about notice of application. We assumed that the notice
of application would contain the date of hearing. I think your point
is well taken. So we will add the words. 'notice of such application

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