Weber County Commissioners Vote Unanimously for New Ordinances re Heliports

Hooray!!

Weber County Commissioners Vote Unanimously for New Ordinances re Heliports

Guest Post by Lee Schussman, Eden, UT                                                    Jan 4, 2012

On Tuesday, January 3, 2012, the three Weber County Commissioners voted unanimously to codify changes in the Weber County Zoning Ordinances that govern the siting of Heliports in the Ogden Valley.

These new ordinances will help to protect the life style of Ogden Valley residents while simultaneously maintaining the opportunity of helicopter-based businesses to be established and to grow in the Ogden Valley.

Please see previous postings here on this web site for details of the processes over the last 18 months and for more details of the changes. (Or, soon these new ordinances should be posted on the Weber County web sites.) These are some of the main points of the new laws:

“Heliport” has been removed from CV-2 Zones in Ogden Valley.

Heliports may operate only as private commercial facilities, not for use as general public-access heliports.

Heliports will be conditionally permitted only above 6200 feet elevation.

Heliports will be conditionally permitted only in DRR-1 (resort) Zones or F-40 (forest) Zones.

All Heliports will need to have set backs from property lines, appropriate surfaces, and necessary FAA approvals.

The establishment of these ordinances is a HUGE deal. There are many areas of the country where the use of commercial helicopters in residential or business areas has become very problematic. Safety, noise, lighting, dust control, and other issues are often extremely hard to mitigate while preserving businesses’ private property rights and the rights of businesses to successfully operate. Thanks to much work and long efforts on the parts of our Ogden Valley Planning Commission, Sean Wilkinson in the County Planning Office, and many dedicated Ogden Valley residents, and thanks to the recent vote of the Weber County Commissioners, we now have in place a set of ordinances that go a long way toward balancing the needs of Ogden Valley residents and the needs of potential Ogden Valley helicopter-based businesses.