Future American Fork residents may enjoy a stream in their yards.

At the request of developers, the city staff is working on an amendment to city ordinances that would allow developers to leave irrigation ditches open and above ground so they can be incorporated as water features into landscaping.

City planner Rod Despain prepared a draft of an ordinance that would have allowed developers to create those water features -- but without using irrigation water.

The ordinance would have continued requiring developers to pipe irrigation ditches for efficiency and liability reasons.

"The current code anticipated all open streams would be irrigation ditches and administered by the irrigation company," he said. "Independent of irrigation ditches or in concert with them, moving or standing water may be a desirable plan."

Homeowners would have to provide a separate source of water for their streams, independent of irrigation water to limit the liability of the irrigation company.

But after an attorney representing a homeowner protested, planning commissioners turned down the ordinance, asking Despain to bring back several versions for future consideration.

Attorney George Brown represented a family who wished to put in a stream as a landscape element. He said the commissioners have made too many changes in the proposed ordinance.

"When we first started this discussion, we were talking about a horse; now we have a camel," he said.

He said the city should not be concerned about liability. Court cases indicate irrigation companies "are not liable for natural water, but hidden dangers and hidden traps," he said. Irrigation companies would be liable for willful and malicious acts but not things that occur naturally.

Despain's original ordinance placed limits on how the streams could be built, such as the amount of water, its speed and the slope of the banks. Those conditions were apparently not enough, as commissioners asked Despain to write another proposal for an ordinance they could consider.

"I don't really like this ordinance," said Commissioner Karen Schaack. "It seems like we are really making it difficult for a developer to be creative in his landscaping. Part of what you do is make use of natural land. Why would you cover it up to create it againfi"

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B1.