The Torrington Inland Wetlands Commission on Jan. 7 set a public hearing for Feb. 4 to adopt newly surveyed wetlands into the city wetlands map, updating the commission's official regulatory map with digitized survey data collected over the past year.

A staff presenter explained that the commission's office compiles digitized wetlands from applications and other historic maps into a single master GIS layer and that the annual adoption is the mechanism the commission uses to keep the official map current. "This is how we've been adopting changes to our inland wetlands map is to just yearly take all of the digitized maps that came in from the applications over the past year and, and just accept them as our new map on an annual basis," the staff member said.

Staff said the yellow shading on the map identifies the Upland Review area and noted the compiled map aligns well with state soil maps in the area shown. The staff member said a separate map amendment will be scheduled for an AJK property (referred to by staff as needing separate handling because of enforcement history) so that particular survey can be adopted cleanly.

The commission voted to schedule the public hearing for Feb. 4; the voice vote recorded "Aye" and "Motion carries," without a roll-call tally recorded in the transcript.

The public hearing will give property owners and other stakeholders an opportunity to review and comment on the proposed map changes; staff said the adoption is primarily a statutory and administrative step to clarify regulated areas.