West Deer to revisit zoning ordinance draft

West Deer’s draft zoning ordinance isn’t necessarily going all the way back to the drawing board, but it will undergo some more editing.

The township held a public hearing on the draft last week. Supervisors did not vote on the proposal.

“Based in part on some of the comments that were made during the meeting, we recognize some errors that we made in the drafting of the ordinance,” Solicitor Gavin Robb said. “And, frankly, that falls on my plate. So we are going to be making not only those corrections, but I know there’s some other potential changes that are going to be considered by the board.

“We also will be receiving additional input from the board, again, in part based on some of the comments from the folks who came out.”

West Deer’s zoning ordinance has not been significantly updated since 2012, according to the township.

A dozen people spoke during the hearing. Most are members of a residents’ group concerned with fracking in the township. Those residents questioned the oil and gas drilling sections of the draft.

One point of misunderstanding between the draft and public comments were setbacks of gas wells from “principal structures” versus “primary residences.” The definitions of those terms were unclear to the public.

Others questioned what they called a “waiver clause,” where a waiver can be obtained from adjoining landowners for deep well sites that are placed closer than the minimum distances but not be located any closer than 500 feet from an existing principal structure.

Robb said the township expects the draft to be on February’s meeting agenda for discussion. Then, at the supervisors’ discretion, a public hearing could be scheduled two months after that.

At the February meeting, if the board believes more changes need to be made to the draft, it could wait until its March meeting to schedule a public hearing, which would push the hearing back to sometime in May.