Environmental Law Matters

On April 22, Judson Turner, director of Georgia's Environmental Protection Division, issued a memorandum that changes how the agency and local government development authorities are to measure vegetated buffer requirements along coastal marshland. The Georgia Erosion and Sedimentation Control Act requires a 25 foot vegetated buffer adjacent to waters of the state, in which no development or impervious surfaces may be located. Since at least 2004, EPD has by policy measured the buffer along marshes from the jurisdictional line set by the Coastal Marshland Protection Act. With ...