Prince William County, VA Landscaping Rules: Tree Removal & Heritage Trees (2026)

1-2100 et seq. The overlay divides the county into resource protection areas (RPAs), the environmentally sensitive lands closest to the water, and resource management areas (RMAs), covering the rest of the county. Sec. 05 defines the RPA to include tidal wetlands, connected nontidal wetlands, tidal shores, perennial water bodies, and a 100-foot-wide RPA buffer area of natural or established vegetation running along both sides of every water body with perennial flow. That buffer, defined in Sec. 04 as an area of natural or established vegetation managed to protect other components of a resource protection area and state waters from significant degradation due to land disturbances, is the county's primary tool for keeping mature tree canopy in place near streams feeding the Occoquan Reservoir and the Bay.

Sec. 06 limits what can happen inside the RPA itself: new development is restricted to water-dependent facilities, and after November 27, 1990, no accessory or secondary structure may be placed there without an approved exception. Outside the RPA, county-wide clearing controls still apply: any land-disturbing activity or grading exceeding 2,500 square feet anywhere designated RPA or RMA on the county's overlay map requires a land-disturbing permit and prior study approval under Sec. 10. Property owners who need to encroach into the buffer, for a driveway, a dock or a cleared building envelope, can apply for an exception under Sec.

17, decided either administratively or, for larger requests, by the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Review Board after a public hearing under Sec. 18. The ordinance exempts utility, railroad and public road construction that minimizes RPA encroachment under Sec. 14, and silvicultural, meaning timber-harvesting, activities that follow the Virginia Department of Forestry's water-quality best-management practices under Sec. 15. Timbering outside the overlay is separately restricted by Sec. 53, which bars harvesting within 50 feet of any property line bordering a different zoning district or a residential use in the A-1 Agricultural district.