Draft Suggestion from Pitkin County Planning Office

Here is Cindy's first draft suggesting size regulations for Greenhouses in Pitkin County.  Please provide your questions and comments by clicking 'comments' at the bottom of this post.
Thanks!

Encouraging local agriculture

From an economic perspective, if the Roaring Fork Valley were to make a paradigm shift away from it's reliance on construction, real estate development, recreation and ranching how important are greenhouses and community supported farms? As the economics of food change will local farming take the place of, or subsidize, ranching and our other forms of livelihood? As outlined previously, an operation such as Peach Valley CSA or Sustainable Settings will have distinctly different requirements than the homeowner who simply wants to grow some of their own fresh vegetables or animal protein. With our abundance of open space, sunshine and access to irrigation water we have a uniquely favorable situation. A strong community vision (or local food growing master plan) together with the appropriate regulations, incentives and zoning guidelines to support that vision will be key to the success of community-supported agriculture. Is there a consensus?

Greenhouse Committee - Suggestions for regulating greenhouses

Our Pitkin County Planning Office is anxious to receive some word of our deliberations regarding recommendations for Greenhouse Regulations for Pitkin County. I confess to being a tardy leader, but I would like to get our discussion started. All of you except Brook and Chris (both of whom I have issued re-invitations) are signed on as Authors on the Blog:
http://pitkingreenhouses.blogspot.com/
First, a brief statement of facts regarding greenhouses (barns) in Pitkin County:
In ANY Zone, you may have as large a greenhouse as your floor-area-ration allows;
If you have 20 acres or more, you may have, in ADDITION to your floor area ratio, 58 SF per acre, in barn/greenhouse floor area BEYOND your floor area ratio;

Garfield County - An Example

Garfield County Zoning Regulations consider its Rural Zone, with minimum 2-acre lot sizes, to allow Agriculture and Accessory Buildings (max. height 40') for Agricultural Use without size restrictions, and as a Use by Right.
Download Garfield Zoning Code 2009

Tim Lindholm's List: Zoning for Local Agriculture

Meeting with Cindy Houben, December 9, 2009
Removing code barriers to sustainable building and local food:
1) Encourage detached greenhouse construction and use for year round food production by not including greenhouse footprint as FAR. Support greenhouses on small acreages (less than 20 acres), in subdivision open space, in community gardens wherever there is a concentration of people, energy, and resources for growing year round food.
2) Encourage attached greenhouse construction (integral to a residence but separted by door) for genuine small scale year round food production by not including greenhouse footprint as FAR. Advantages include increased year round attention and potential for common wall to temper heat requirements. Creatively address abuse of this privilege perhaps through deed restriction or some other instrument.
3) Encourage a local food economy by removing code barriers to fruit tree, honey bee, and small scale livestock stewarding. Creatively address wildlife issues instead of outright banning of food production. Encourage value added local cottage industry related to food production by simplifying approval of kitchens for this work.
4) Encourage renewable energy projects with codes that fast track or otherwise help individuals, businesses, and public entities design and build these projects in a timely fashion (reduce time and costs by creatively designing the permitting process to fast track these projects.) Proactively identify systems and designs that people could/should consider.
5) Encourage sustainable building projects by identifying these projects first and early to get them on a fast track. Consider the living building challenge www.ilbi.com as a resource for identifying and encouraging these projects which already require more time and consideration in their design.
a) Promote the use of healthy, local materials.
b) Promote stawbale wall construction by not including in FAR calculations.
c) Promote the catchment, storage, and reuse of rainwater and graywater from structures and sites (now being tested at the state level in Colorado).
d) See www.ilbi.com for their twenty areas of focus and for ideas for removing code barriers.
6) Encourage the preservation of existing agricultural structures on small acreages as well as on large for support of genuine local food production. Loafing sheds and barns needed on small acreages as well as large for support of this sustainable movement towards local agriculuture.
(personal example of having to remove sheds while big land owners are building huge barns).
7) Encourage energy efficiency and accurate identification of “green” building projects with energy use calculations up front (ask Rick Heede about this)(he uses kWh/sf-yr, kWh/day, tonnes CO2e/yr, and lb CO2e/sf-yr as measures) (snowmass caucus still promoting large projects, for example, with out understanding their carbon footprint).
8) Encourage genuine small scale farming through all of the above (which will in turn promote local commerce, livelihood, community, simplicity, durability, healthy soil, lower energy use, and hopefully as sense of well being for those choosing to live in this area).
DOWNLOAD WORD FILE
DOWNLOAD PDF FILE

Sustainable Agriculture - What We Need!

In order to not only allow, but to ENCOURAGE sustainable local agriculture in every county in the Roaring Fork Valley, we need the following:

1. Unlimited Greenhouses: Jerome Osentowski of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, has demonstrated for nearly three decades, how to grow very diverse food crops, using greenhouses and outdoor forest gardens. There is very little we can grow without greenhouses. We MUST be able to put acres under greenhouse, if we are going to grow a vital local food economy.

2. Just like the old west, we need root cellars for winter food storage and bunkhouses for agricultural workers, located on ranches and farms. We are experiencing now the phenomenon of our children going off to college, some of them learning agriculture and coming back to help build a local food economy, but they are having great difficulty finding housing. Our market has priced them far out of the ability to obtain housing, and we must solve this, or we will continue to experience Brain-Drain - losing the knowledgable and enthusiastic people who want to grow our food!   Can we fix this?

3. We need some form of tax advantages for ranch owners to lease irrigated farmland for vegetable farming in addition to animal raising. This may come in many forms, but unless we do it, we are wasting lots of irrigated land for pleasure horses, rather than real food for people.

4. Bear problems: We need a common-sense strategy for dealing with occasional bear problems, rather than blanket laws criminalizing the planting of fruit trees.  If we want to develop a local food economy, we will have to find creative ways of dealing with (or simply allowing) bears having a food-scarce year in the high country, who visit our orchards and restaurant dumpsters.

PitCo Ag-Zoning - The Latest

Here is the latest Table of Dimenional Requirements, for Ag-Zones from 2 acres to 160 acres in Pitkin County.

Base F.A.R. remains 5,750 sf, with TDR's up to 15,000 sf.

Greenhouses still considered Barns, still limited in size per earlier POST on April 14.