AURORA | Amid widespread drought, the Aurora City Council is moving forward with changes to landscape requirements for industrial developments to make them more water efficient.
At Monday’s study session, council discussed changes to the city’s unified development ordinance to reduce and eliminate requirements for development in industrial zoning to have certain landscaping, such as shrubs and ornamental grasses.
The changes would help cut back on water used in industrial areas for irrigation and would apply to any development in industrial, airport district and business and tech zoning, which could include data centers and manufacturing warehouses.
The estimated potential water savings for all of the changes would be almost 4 million gallons per year, according to city water officials. Outdoor irrigation is the largest drain on the city’s water, accounting for 40% of annual water use.
Marshall Brown, the director of Aurora Water, said the proposed changes would make a positive impact on water demand.
“I think from a water use perspective and consistent with the water conservation ordinance … we’ve come up with a good solution to be able to reduce landscaping to what’s important and reasonable in the industrial spaces and we’ve minimized or eliminated the landscaping that doesn’t have as much value for the water that it would demand,” Brown said.
The proposed changes include:
- Making curbside shrubs and ornamental grasses optional
- Requiring all trees to be low-water (current requirement is 75% of trees must be low-water)
- Reducing the number of trees required in parking lots
- Eliminating street buffer landscaping and buffer landscaping between developments of the same use type
- Eliminating internal detention pond landscaping
Landscaping buffers would still be required between residential and non-residential developments.
Additionally most of the requirements for trees will not change because trees can help protect the environment from drought. The code also already requires all shrubs, ornamental grasses, perennials and groundcover plants to be low-water, as well as prohibits cool-season turf for industrial and commercial developments.
Councilmember Curtis Gardner, who spearheaded the changes, said that though the changes may seem minor, they will result in significant and important water savings.
“I am not convinced that aesthetics alone are a good reason to maintain water hungry landscaping in industrial areas,” Gardner said.
Council unanimously supported moving the changes on to a vote at a future meeting.