The town has the ability to create interim zoning, a protective overlay district that would prevent development in sensitive wildlife areas. Interim zoning needs to be approved by the town select board and is then in effect for two years. It can be renewed for another year after that.
Interim zoning won't stop the development that is already in progress and it will do nothing to impact the appeal which is being brought in Vermont Environmental Court this week. But it will protect other tracts of fragile habitat from fragmentation.
In the sensitive bear habitat in Slide Brook, between Sugarbush's Lincoln Peak and Mount Ellen, there is already one large single-family home which was built, as a use by right. The clearing for that house felled a fair number of bear-scarred beech trees, indicators of bear habitat.
The project that went under appeal this week for Robert Crean is about more than his five lots. Crean, and all other landowners in that area, have a statutory use by right to clear land and build a single-family home. Once all those bear-scarred beech trees have been cleared, it will be easy and logical to make the argument that development is okay because there is no bear habitat to protect.
However, it is also possible that Fayston could create a protective overlay district much like Warren's open meadow provision and Waitsfield's high elevation ridgeline zoning provision that identify specific features to be protected and then provide a legal means of allowing landowners reasonable use of their land while protecting the fragile, sensitive features.
Why not undertake that project now?
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