Representatives of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission presented a draft of the new Southwestern Lehigh County comprehensive plan to Upper Milford supervisors last week.

Appearing at the supervisors’ March 2 meeting, LVPC Executive Director Becky Bradley and her staff reviewed highlights of the plan and went over some of the discussion and work on the part of the steering committee that went into developing the plan. The new plan updates the last plan, which was adopted in 2005. The draft will be circulated to the six municipalities that comprise southwestern Lehigh County – Alburtis, Emmaus, Macungie, Lower Macungie and Upper and Lower Milford townships – and public hearings will be held.

Bradley said there was “pretty intense public participation” in the process of developing the new plan, and the increase in traffic generated by development in Lower Macungie through Upper and Lower Milford was one of the major concerns.

In addition to public meetings, residents of all the municipalities were surveyed to determine their concerns and priorities, with enough response to be statistically valid, Bradley said.

The draft lays out the communities’ visions for issues including natural resources, farmland, community services and community utilities.

Agriculture and natural resources were prioritized far higher than development by residents, Bradley said. The draft includes strategies for supporting farmland protection and minimizing the amount of land consumed by development.

Those strategies include working with local property owners and the county to permanently preserve farmland, applying zoning to limit non-agricultural uses in areas recommended for farmland preservation and discouraging intensive, high-density land use and development where current infrastructure is inadequate or non-existent.

There is also a section in the draft, Bradley said, that ties in some ways to address issues that impact multiple communities.

Supervisors Chairman George DeVault said, “I’d like to see as many teeth in this [the plan] as possible.”

Residents can go to the planning commission website for more information.

In other business, supervisors approved Plans 1B and 2 of the Fields at Indian Creek age-restricted development, contingent on the developer, Kay Builders, addressing all the comments by the township engineer.

DeVault said of the plan, which supervisors had criticized at their last meeting, “We know it’s a mess; our hands are tied.”

Supervisors also appointed Barry Williams to the recreation commission. Williams, a former member of the commission, had resigned in 2015 to take a position as an elected auditor, but is now available to serve on the commission again. His appointment is supported by the commission.

Supervisors also met in executive session for 25 minutes to discuss real estate.