Beginning on March 15, the first parcels in Polk County that received corrective action notices regarding buffers will have exhausted their 11-month no penalty periods. Polk County Planning and Zoning Administrator Jake Snyder said the law, enacted three years ago, requires 16.5 feet of perennial grasses along ditches and a 50-foot average buffer on public watercourses. “The buffer law was enacted three years ago by the State of Minnesota,” said Snyder. “There is a little bit of leeway when you have an area of 100 feet of trees and grasses, and you can’t get that close to the water anyway, but then you have a point on the field you can come in a little closer due to the feature out there. Public waters are something where there is a little discrepancy, but it must meet 30 feet.”
Polk County Planning and Zoning is the enforcement agent regarding buffers, but compliance is determined by the West Polk Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD), and East Polk SWCD. “The mechanisms in place as far as the Polk County Zoning Ordinance is, we are the enforcement agent behind the buffer law, and the SWCDs are the compliance determiner in that program,” said Snyder. “It adds this dynamic where we’re not making the call if a property is compliant or non-compliant, which is done by the SWCD and their field technicians. They are trained to do that. Our field staff under Environmental Services is the enforcement agent.”
Anybody that receives a letter regarding anything about buffers needs to contact the SWCD to see how to get into compliance with the program.
The State of Minnesota has said 90 percent of the state is compliant, but Snyder says that number doesn’t reflect the level of compliance in Polk County. “As far as a percentage, it’s very hard to determine compliance rates,” said Snyder. “This spring, there were 700 letters sent out of the Environmental Services office reflecting non-compliance regarding buffers. So, we’re not anywhere near 90 percent, maybe near 50 percent. I don’t know the number, but it’s not near 90 percent.”
The zoning ordinance allows for criminal prosecution of non-compliant parcels, or the county can use an Administrative Penalty Order (APO) to apply a fine to the parcel. “The Polk County Zoning Ordinance reflects the process of enforcement through two avenues,” said Snyder. “The first avenue is to prosecute criminally. Any zoning violation is a misdemeanor and punishable as such. The other avenue is through an APO. An APO is a fine and is due on a per month basis. The fine starts at $50 after the 11 months pass on a corrective action notice being sent out. We are in the stages of there is going to be monetary penalties sent out to landowners. The monetary assessments can build up per month. It’s $50 for the first six months. Then, thereafter, it moves to $200 per month per parcel of non-compliance.”
Snyder said that Environmental Services will begin enforcement through the APO process, but that fines can be refunded if timely action is taken to correct the non-compliance. “The plan was to have billings go out with the APO,” said Snyder. “The APO is a document that states the parcel is not in compliance, here is the billing, and where to send it too. Landowners can simply pay the billing, or they can make the corrective steps, and the billing goes away. The theory behind the program was to do all the steps necessary to get the buffer in compliance. This needs to be field verified or at least discussed with the SWCD on actions that were taken to correct the APO, hence why the corrective action notice is a portion of that.” The corrective notice tells the landowner what they need to do, and the first step is to contact the SWCD, and if done in a timely matter, the landowner will get a refund of all penalties assessed. “Again, we’re not going to wait around forever. It’s been going on for three years where these buffers have needed to be in place,” said Snyder. “It’s the mechanism, and the wheels are moving forward.”
If fines are unpaid, Snyder said the county would consider criminal prosecution but are also investigating whether the penalties can be applied as an unpaid special assessment on property taxes. “There is an avenue to prosecute in this all criminally,” said Snyder. “Now, that’s involving the court system, and the county attorney would be involved at that point. Discussions with the County Attorney’s Office is we’re going to proceed with the APO procedures in the billing phases. But at some point, it makes sense to the Environmental Services staff to push it over to criminally prosecute as those billings to that $1,000 value because that’s the punishment of going through the misdemeanor violation. That has not been determined at this point if it will get criminally prosecuted or billed out until corrected. That is a conversation we had today, and we’ll continue to work with the County Attorney’s Office to sure up the mechanisms of enforcement. We don’t want to be billing out people. We don’t to be monetarily hurting people or pushing it off on their taxes as unpaid special assessments. We simply want them to work with the SWCD go get the buffer in place to get in compliance with state law, and they won’t receive any billings from our office.”
For information on compliance or to update the status of buffers in western Polk County call the West Polk SWCD at 218-281-6070 or in eastern Polk County, call East Polk SWCD at 218-563-2777.
