WATERLOO — White represents agriculture on Black Hawk County’s future land use map.

Areas defined for potential housing are shown with splashes of yellow, while business development zones are dots of red.

“It’s over 98 percent white,” said Peter Beck, chairman of the county’s Planning and Zoning Commission. “Obviously we didn’t paint the county with a broad brush.

“When this was developed in 1995 we tried to keep the focus on agriculture,” he added. “That really hadn’t been an issue before Peregrine, before Monsanto.”

Monsanto Co. last month pulled plans for a $90 million seed corn processing facility south of Waterloo after the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended against zoning 153 acres of ag land for industrial development.

A planned $10 million Peregrine Financial Group mirrored-glass office building in the rural area north of Cedar Falls — including 70 very high-paying jobs — was in jeopardy last April before the Board of Supervisors stepped up to rezone the 6.6 acres of land in Beaver Hills over objections from the zoning commission.

Those high-profile situations left many local business leaders grumbling, prompting local economic development officials to ask county supervisors to take another look at their zoning regulations.

Open for business?

“These three projects — PFG, Monsanto and, to a certain extent, the Elk Run Power project  — just all came along in a one-year time frame,” said Steve Dust, president of the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance.

“All three were very good projects and all three had unique characteristics that made them best suited for a location (outside of the city limits),” Dust said. “All three of them ran into a highly restrictive land use policy.

“I think these three projects have pointed out that we need to take a look at the policy and give the Planning and Zoning Commission more flexibility in addressing these issues. We want to make sure that Black Hawk County is on equal footing with other counties — not only counties similar to it, but counties surrounding it.”

Dust said he’s had brief conversations with some county supervisors about the matter.

“We want to work with the county, by all means,” he said. “But we want to present Black Hawk County as being business friendly.”

County Supervisor Frank Magsamen welcomed a chance to open the discussion.

“Our intent with the ordinance has been to preserve agricultural land in the county and to direct development to the cities where the infrastructure exists,” Magsamen said.

“Basically we  have a zoning ordinance that has met our needs in the past,” he added. “Should it be more business friendly? I am certainly always open to sit down and discuss that.”

Farmland preservation

Land for the proposed Elk Run Energy Station, a 750-megawatt coal burning power plant northwest of Waterloo, never came under scrutiny of county zoning rules — it was rezoned by the city government contingent upon its annexation, which as yet has not occurred . But county land use policies clearly would have frowned on such a project in the country.

P&Z’s Beck said it’s a simple difference in philosophy between urban and rural planners.

“Cities are designed to be proactive and working to implement growth, where counties have the view of preserving agricultural land and directing the growth to the cities,” he said.  “Overall, the encouragement is to the incorporated areas where the infrastructure exists.”

Many areas in the county don’t have paved roads or available utilities to handle dense development. When such villages crop up the county and its taxpayers come under pressure to provide the services.

Mixing homes or businesses with the dust, noise and sometimes unpleasant aromas of farm and livestock operations also creates compatibility concerns.

That’s a big issue for zoning commissioner Eric Sage, president of the county’s Farm Bureau chapter.

“Basically we are creating subdivisions along highways,” Sage said. “The more people you put out there, the more issues you create with people trying to do agriculture.”

Still, Beck takes issue with the idea the current policy won’t accommodate growth.

“Personally I don’t think we are overly restrictive,” he said. “If you look at our policy statements, which were publicly agreed upon — and that we use as a framework on land use applications — we acknowledge there are areas within the county that could be looked at for industrial development.”

The land use map does designate a large area on County Road C-57, just west of Highway 218, for commercial or industrial growth. There’s some available commercial land on the northwest corner of Independence Avenue and Elk Run Road, and a bit on Highway 218 between Waterloo and Washburn.

But the land use map is just a guide. It doesn’t guarantee land will be rezoned just because it fits the plan, and it doesn’t mean the county won’t consider a zoning change that doesn’t conform with the map.

LESA system adopted

While many residents upset about the PFG and Monsanto decisions were calling for the zoning commissioners to be replaced, the members were following rules put in place through public hearings and approved by the Board of Supervisors.

“They were just doing their job,” said Magsamen, noting he and other supervisors should handle the politics.

Black Hawk County has had a rural zoning ordinance since 1960, but the current plan was adopted in 1982 and tweaked over the years.

The ordinance’s stated mission is “to preserve the availability of agricultural land; to consider the protection of soil from wind and water erosion; to encourage efficient urban development patterns; to lessen congestion on the street or highway; to secure safety from fire, flood, panic, and other hazards; to protect health and the general welfare; to provide adequate light and air; to prevent the overcrowding of land; to avoid undue concentration of population; and to facilitate the adequate provision of transportation, water, sewerage, schools, parks and other public improvements.

“Furthermore, this ordinance is also intended and designed to … provide local citizens and local governments the means by which agricultural land may be protected from nonagricultural development pressures … thus assuring the preservation of agriculture as a major factor in the economy of this county and state.”

The county in 1995 adopted a Land Evaluation and Site Assessment, or LESA, system to evaluate zoning requests. It uses weighted factors —the largest being the land’s ability to grow crops — to create a score between zero and 300, with higher scores indicating higher agricultural viability. 

The goal was to create an empirical tool in evaluating land use and remove politics from the equation.

Projects are unique

The county also uses eight guidelines in evaluating land use issues, with the first being a policy to allow only agricultural uses on prime ag land, which has a LESA score of 242 or above.

Another guideline encourages residential, commercial and industrial growth to the cities, noting development of such uses in the rural area should go to existing areas already zoned for them.

County Zoning Administrator Aric Schroeder said those policy statements are just guidelines, not laws, and that individual requests can have unique attributes.

The Peregrine project was denied, in part, by the zoning commission because of concerns poor soils and environmentally sensitive land would not support a septic system.

“Nobody was arguing that was prime farm ground,” Schroeder said. “I think an even bigger concern was whether that was the best place for an office building given the proximity to a residential area and the traffic it would generate.”

Indeed, concerns from neighbors come up with many zoning changes and wouldn’t disappear by drafting less restrictive language in the ordinance.

“Monsanto was unique too because one of the key issues was its relationship to agriculture,” Schroeder said. “You could argue that what Monsanto does is a value-added agricultural process, but it was industrial under the county’s definition.”

Some county officials have suggested, at the least, the zoning ordinance should be amended to address value-added agriculture in agricultural zones.

“We’re always open to review and any changes to any of our ordinances,” Schroeder said.

Requests have been rare

Recent applications aside, Black Hawk County has not been overrun with requests for commercial and industrial development.

From 1991 through January 2008 there were about 300 requests for rezoning property in unincorporated areas, but only 40 involved zoning to commercial or manufacturing use.

Most of those requests involved adjustments to make existing businesses conform to the zoning rules or expansions to existing businesses. Only 10 commercial requests were denied by the Planning and Zoning Commission over 17 years — including Peregrine and Monsanto.

Plans for a boat sales yard were rejected in 2006 and a request for a gymnastics center was turned down in 2005. When county supervisors turned down a request to rezone a former turkey farm for commercial use near Hudson in 2002, the owner committed suicide.

Zoning officials in another Eastern Iowa urbanized county also said they don’t get much interest from businesses looking at rural sites, largely because the businesses need more sewer, water, power or paved roads than those sites provide.

“We rarely get that kind of a request for commercial or industrial development in the unincorporated area,” said Les Beck, Linn County planning and development director. “For the most part those types of businesses are going to look in the cities.

“Our land use policies indicate some limited commercial or industrial development might be appropriate in the rural area … but mainly to serve the agricultural community or the traveling public,” Beck added, noting Linn County also uses a LESA system.

Zoning ordinances vary

The less-urbanized counties surrounding Black Hawk have a mix of zoning policies and standards.

“I think we pretty much mirror each other in terms of our zoning ordinances,” said Bremer County Building and Zoning Administrator Doug Bird.

Bremer County’s comprehensive plan has “very few” spots for commercial development. The county looks at the land’s suitability for crops and is working on a LESA system now.

“Usually there’s a need for facilities — water, sewer, gas — outside the city,” he said. “There’s more encouragement for the commercial facilities to locate in the cities.”

Butler County Zoning Administrator Steve Busse said his county also tries to preserve agricultural land, but has seen some political pressure too.

Hawkeye Renewables is building an ethanol plant northwest of Shell Rock near Highway 3 after getting the land rezoned by the Butler County Board of Supervisors in 2006.

“We had pretty good hearings on it with people for and against it,” said Busse. “There was a lot of talk about economic development.”

Ultimately, the 225 acres in question were not the best for farming and the site had access to rail and Highway 3, helping push it to approval.

Grundy County, which also hoped to woo Monsanto, is another story.

“We’ve had a lot of requests here lately and we added a new C-M district not very long ago to handle (industrial) development,” said Misty Wells, Grundy County zoning administrator. “Prior to that there wasn’t a lot of room for real development in the business area.

“We weigh the (crop suitability rating) but the zoning commission has been proactive in welcoming businesses and most of them have been approved. If we can make it fit into our ordinance we find a way to approve them. “

The opening of relocated Highway 20 through Grundy County pulled the main route outside of cities into the county. For example, The Mill, a commercial area at Highway 20 and Highway 14, was constructed after getting zoning approval.

Wells said the county has not chosen to pursue a LESA system, worrying it could “make things more rigid than we want to be at this point.”

“Sometimes you can’t be all black and white,” she said. “You have to look at the individual projects. “

Contact Tim Jamison at (319) 291-1577 or tim.jamison@wcfcourier.com.