The Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Board (CBPA) is comprised of nine members, who are appointed by the City Council, and responsible for the review of various requests to the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Ordinance (CBPAO).
The City of Virginia Beach adopted the CBPAO on January 1, 1991. This ordinance affects all property in Virginia Beach that drains into the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, approximately the northern one-third of the City.
In addition, the CBPAO is an effort to enhance the water quality by protecting environmentally-sensitive areas such as buffers adjacent to waterways, tidal shores, and wetlands, as well as highly erodible soils. These sensitive areas, called Resource Protection Areas (RPAs), are closest to the shorelines that have an intrinsic water quality value or are sensitive to the impact of development. All other lands in the watershed are called Resource Management Areas (RMAs). The RMA is intended to protect the integrity of the RPA and extends from the RPA boundary outward to the watershed boundary limit.
Further information regarding the CBPAO can be found in Appendix F of the Virginia Beach City Code.
New CBPA Board Application Process
Effective November 28, 2011, all applications must be submitted by the fifth of the preceding month of the CBPA Board Public Hearing or the forth Monday of the month.