The Door County Planning Department and the county board’s Resource Planning Committee have scheduled an open house meeting at the government center in Sturgeon Bay on Tuesday, from 3-6PM. The open house is intended to ensure that town officials and the general public understand the county’s proposal to shift the wetland zoning district to an “overlay” district. By state law, Door County’s wetland zoning is based primarily on maps provided periodically by the State Department of Natural Resources. An issue arose recently where new wetland maps from the DNR shifted the mapped wetland boundaries, leaving gaps with no zoning district designation. After a laborious effort to fix the problem, planning department staff began a ten month process with the RPC to create an overlay system that would kick in whenever the DNR provides updated wetlands maps. The Resource Planning Committee is expected to have a public hearing on the change in April and the proposed maps will be available at the open house meeting on Tuesday.
