The Montezuma County commissioners are drawing fire from opposite directions recently for two decisions on high-impact proposals — decisions that are drawing attention to the shortcomings of the county’s land-use plan.

The county is being sued by two residents of the Dolores River Valley for approving a gravel pit on 19 acres on the Line Camp property in the scenic river corridor.

And the U.S. Department of Justice recently announced that it will sue the county unless the commissioners retract a decision they made in August 1999 rejecting a group home for juvenile drug-abusers in Lost Canyon.

In both cases neighbors vigorously protested the proposed projects, expressing concerns about increased traffic, diminished property values and possible damage to their quality of life.

In the case of the gravel pit, the commissioners voted to approve it, but put strict measures into the pit’s permit to mitigate some of its negative impacts.

In the case of the group home, the commissioners rejected the proposal outright, saying it wasn’t appropriate in that rural, Lost Canyon locale. But the Justice Department believes the county unfairly discriminated against the proposed home because of the nature of its clientele.

Land-use decisions are frequently controversial, and it isn’t unusual for counties or cities to be sued for some decisions. But it’s important that those decisions appear to be consistent, and many local residents maintain that it’s difficult to see how the group home would have been a more objectionable neighbor than the gravel pit.

Since the implementation of the new land-use code in 1998, the county has rejected only two major proposals — the group home, and a high-density subdivision in the Yellow Jacket area. In the latter case, surrounding neighbors made the point that most of them had already zoned their tracts for agriculture, making the subdivision an anomaly.

But the rejection of the group home was a little less clearcut, and the approval of the gravel pit has spawned lingering concerns about whether the current land-use code, with its controversial Landowner-Initiated Zoning, is adequate to handle growth in our area.

LIZ was created in 1996 by a working group of 12 citizens chosen by a different board of commissioners. The group was heavily stacked in favor of agriculture, private property rights and development interests, with just one lonely member who advocated traditional zoning. And the majority of the citizens who showed up at public meetings on the plan were outspoken opponents of regulations.

It was little surprise, then, that the group balked at stringent land-use restrictions and opted instead for a novel scheme: having landowners zone their own tracts.

LIZ was intended more to pacify those calling for land-use regulations than to actually create such regulations. But, to the county’s credit, officials tried to make a genuine plan out of this rather off-the-wall idea. They said it would encourage adjoining landowners to work together to zone their neighborhoods, and that uses that didn’t fit in could be rejected.

Now, two years later, the county is still struggling to make this notion work.

If LIZ and the land-use code are going to be viable means of dealing with land-use conflicts and managing growth, some changes need to be made.

One of the biggest problems with LIZ is that it allows landowners to remain unzoned — an option which a large portion of the county has chosen. This undermines the concept of having neighbors working to unify their areas, and it means that many landowners have no way of knowing what their neighbors intend for their properties.

Then, when a controversial proposal pops up — whether a high-density subdivision, a mining operation or a hog farm — neighbors are stunned. And if they haven’t bothered to zone their own properties, they have a difficult time arguing that the proposed use doesn’t "fit."

It’s time that the county set a deadline for everyone to choose a zone. Then county planners should work with citizens to try to ensure consistency in the zoning in different neighborhoods, smoothing out potentially conflicting land uses.