The San Juan County Lopez Village Planning Review Committee on Aug. 2025 reviewed a docketed code correction (Docket Request 24-0004) and heard residents warn that recent state guidance expanding water‑quality buffers on intermittent streams could make small village lots difficult or impossible to develop.

Barbara, a Lopez Village Planning Review Committee member, told the committee that the docket request began after the code lost a single word that changed how a parcel was treated for uses including parking. "We were missing a word — residential — in a line, and we got what we got because that's the way the code read," she said, describing how the change produced a large parking lot at the village's north entrance and heightened pedestrian and bicycle safety concerns.

Seth Jones, the new San Juan County Department of Community Development director, said he will prioritize making the code clearer and restoring the intent of older planning documents. "I will look at, when I have the opportunity to do that, what the intent of language in the code is there for," Jones said, adding that he aims to condense overlapping policies and make regulations implementable rather than purely aspirational.

Committee members framed the problem in three linked parts: (1) a wording change in the local code that altered expected commercial/residential placement and parking; (2) the resulting traffic and safety effects at a key corner in the village where pedestrians and elderly residents cross; and (3) state-level changes to critical-area guidance that recommend wider water‑quality buffers for intermittent, non–fish-bearing streams.

On buffer changes, staff and residents said the state now recommends setbacks up to 100 feet from some intermittent streams (defined in discussion as streams that flow fewer than six months a year). Committee member Barbara said some Lopez Village lots are small — roughly a half acre — and a 100‑foot setback could render those lots "very difficult to build" or effectively unbuildable without mitigation or local allowances. "It used to be that you were obligated to keep [intermittent streams] vegetated," she said. "Now the state is recommending a water-quality setback of 100 feet."

Sofia Kesem, a planning staff member participating in the meeting, said the county's recent land-capacity analysis was based on current regulations; she did not recall that the capacity modelling assumed a 100‑foot buffer. Staff said Environmental Stewardship and a county consultant are reviewing the critical areas ordinance (CAO) update and will provide comments. Jones said staff will run updated carrying-capacity numbers for the village if the buffer standards change.

The committee also discussed design and mitigation approaches to preserve walkability and slow traffic, such as planting street trees to create a perceived narrower roadway and placing parking behind buildings to keep a walkable commercial core. Residents and committee members described vehicles and bicycles speeding around a downhill corner at the village entrance and said visual design cues can reduce speed and improve safety.

Speakers recommended several next steps for staff: evaluate how a larger buffer would affect buildable lot counts and the ability to meet the village's housing-density goals (the village plan uses a base zoning of six units per acre with potential increases for sustainable or affordable design and an average target cited in discussion of nine units per acre), map parcels that would be affected, and identify potential mitigation tools such as local mitigation standards or reasonable-use exceptions under the CAO.

There was no formal decision to change county code at the meeting. Staff acknowledged the docket request and said they would factor it into ongoing code update work and the CAO review, arrange follow-up analysis, and provide maps and site-specific information back to the committee.

The committee also approved the July 2025 minutes as corrected earlier in the meeting; the approval was recorded by voice vote.

Next steps identified at the meeting included staff coordination with Environmental Stewardship, consultant review of the CAO and the docketed revisions, updated land-capacity calculations if buffer rules change, and preparation of maps and options for mitigation or code language that can preserve both environmental protections and reasonable use of small village lots.