After a two-year wait the Faribault County Board of Commissioners has approved a new ordinance.

The approval of the ordinance came at the county board meeting last Tuesday.

The ordinance has been drafted in order to regulate the proposed use of a pipeline by Buffalo Lake Energy to dispose of wastewater.

The ethanol plant located in Fairmont requested a pipeline be used that would drain run-off water into the Blue Earth River in Faribault County.

In March 2011, the board approved a year-long moratorium to allow county officials time to draft an ordinance concerning this request.

The Planning and Zoning Commission began work on the ordinance in September of that year after research on the topic was complete.

After the first year, they found that creating an ordinance from scratch was presenting some difficulties. The board approved the moratorium be extended an additional year.

“Our timeline stated that we should have something on the books by March 14 this year,” says Michele Stindtman, program administrator of Faribault County Soil and Water Conservation.

Once the ordinance was drafted the Planning and Zoning Board scheduled a public hearing.

The hearing was held on Feb. 12 to allow input from residents of Faribault County.

“There was no public input as far as concerns about the ordinance,”?Stindtman says.

She says that commissioner John Roper was present with questions regarding the affect of the pipeline on private tile.

The drafted ordinance stated that pipelines must be located at least 500 feet from any existing dwelling, which was defined by county attorney Troy Timmerman as a building designed for residential occupancy.

After hearing the update from Stindtman, the commissioners approved the ordinance.