Legal Documents of Sweetwater

Because of the nature and character of their operations, automobile wrecking and salvage yards, junkyards, and similar uses of land can have a decidedly detrimental effect upon surrounding properties. Salvage and wrecking yards tend to create problems of noise, dust, traffic, and health hazards, and may adversely affect property values by their general appearance. The following standards shall be used as a guide to evaluating whether proposed land uses, such as those outlined above, will have properly minimized their objectionable characteristics:

1. All motor vehicles stored or kept in such yards shall be so kept that they will not catch and hold water in which mosquitoes may breed and so that they will not constitute a place or places in which rats, mice, or other vermin may be harbored, reared, or propagated.
2. No automobile wrecking, junk, and salvage yard shall be permitted closer than three hundred (300) feet from any residential district.
3. All outdoor storage of salvage and wrecking operations shall be conducted entirely within an enclosed opaque fence or wall, except driveway areas, from eight (8) to twelve (12) feet in height. Storage between the street and such fence or wall is expressly prohibited. Any fence or wall erected for screening purposes shall be properly painted or otherwise maintained in good condition.
4. No person shall own or maintain an automobile wrecking, junk, or salvage yard within the City of Sweetwater until he has secured approval from the board of zoning appeals in accordance with § 14-605. (1982 Code, § 11-411)