MONTROSE – Some members of FORU, the Friends of the River Uncompahgre, want to make sure a balance is achieved when the Montrose City Council selects a new citizens committee to create new river buffer zones.

Ben Tisdel, FORU boardmember said he and others were worried that the new committee might not follow guidelines established by the Environmental Protection Agency for development near rivers.

“We want to make sure that there is an even balance of interests on the committee, and we want to have the positive hope that all interests are fairly represented,” Tisdel said.

Montrose City Spokesman David Spear said he wants to assure FORU and others that the city council’s plan calls for a balance of members to represent five categories, including landowners, realtors and developers (in one category), river advocates such as FORU, river recreation advocates, and residents in general.

Spear said he expects the river committee to have 11 members but just how many and when the members will be selected is up to the city council.

“It will not be weighted in any direction,” Spear said. “It does not serve anyone’s interest for the council to have a particular outcome, but to reflect some common ground among all these groups.”

Once the committee is formed, Spear said the hope is to find consensus for rules about development along the river.

“We will be at the table and hopefully come to a solution agreeable to all, for those who expressed concern about zoning being too lenient and an equal number on the other side that it will be too strict,” he said. “The idea is to find common ground.”

The deadline for application to the river committee was last week, and about 30 people applied, Spear said.

Two names for the new committee were submitted by FORU, which was founded after scores of cottonwood trees and willows along the Uncompahgre were cut down in 2006 to make way for River Landing, a large shopping complex that’s home to J.C. Penney, Target, Sports Authority, and more.

Alarmed at the denuding of the riverbanks, current FORU chair Elizabeth Roscoe and others formed the group to keep wanton destruction of native plants from happening again.

The city has held two open houses to give out information on preliminary plans to preserve the river corridor, which was the most highly ranked public objective of the 2008 Comprehensive Plan. The plan recommends a 100-foot buffer between the river and any pavement or structures and will be the basis for the new ordinance, said senior city planner Garry Baker earlier this year.

FORU is not only concerned about growth, but about water quality, said FORU member Jim Haugsness before one of the public meetings.

There were no city regulations about riparian development when Matt Miles built River Landing, Haugsness said, but now Miles is now a supporter of FORU, which has also been communicating with the city.

Jeff Crane, executive director of the Colorado Watershed Assembly, said the Uncompahgre Watershed Partnership, funded with EPA money, is working to develop a regional watershed plan to improve water quality and ecosystem health.

That Uncompahgre partnership grew out of the establishment of FORU, Crane said, which began a concerted effort to work on riparian buffers in the Montrose area, while the Ridgway/Ouray Community coalition worked on water issues in the upper basin. Both asked for organizational help from the Colorado Watershed Assembly, Crane said.

But there’s more than environmental concerns to be considered, Spear said, because the river flows through a wide range of public and private land.

The main idea behind new river codes is to have a set of standards that apply universally along the river corridor, Spear said, but that won’t be easy because “development isn’t a cookie cutter business and there are limitations over what can be done reasonably.”

“You have private land use and property rights of individuals, and those have to be balanced in the public interest,” he said.