172063 Hardy, Mt Airy, MD 21771

Rural Conservation-Density Exchange Option Overlay District

The Rural Conservation District is established to conserve farmland and to encourage agricultural activities, thereby helping to ensure that commercial agriculture will continue as a long term land use and a viable economic activity within the County. The RC District is also established to preserve natural features and the rural landscape, while allowing low density, clustered residential development. Residential development is to be permitted only when it is located and designed to minimize its impact on agricultural land, farming operations, and sensitive environmental features; to create attractive rural developments; and to respect existing features of the rural landscape. The preferred land use in the RC District is agriculture. The District is intended to permit a range of uses related to agriculture, to encourage the preservation of large blocks of farmland, and to permanently protect from development the tracts of land which remain after permitted residential development has occurred. Residential lots in the district are likely to be adjacent or close to agricultural land. Residents of property within the RC District should be prepared to accept the impacts associated with normal farming practices; The DEO Overlay District is established to provide land owners in the RC and RR Districts with opportunity and incentive to preserve significant blocks of farmland in the rural area of the county. This district is also intended to encourage the clustering of residential development in areas where the development will not have an adverse impact on farm operations. To accomplish this, the DEO District allows residential density in the RC and RR Districts to be exchanged between parcels. Density exchanges in the District should result in large parcels being preserved in perpetuity, while residential development is directed toward parcels which are able to absorb the additional dwellings.