The city Zoning Hearing Board Thursday approved a special exception that will allow a solder and flux manufacturer on the 3700 block of Beale Avenue to construct a canopy on one side of the building to protect items that would be stored underneath it from rain and snow, thus eliminating potential contaminated runoff to area streams.

The canopy may help allow Amerway Inc. to obtain a “No Exposure Certification” under the state Department of Environmental Protection’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, a program that seeks to ensure against stream contamination, according to the company’s application to the board.

The issue to be considered by the board was whether the proposed canopy would bump the property occupied by the plant past the zoning ordinance’s permissible maximum impervious surface coverage of 75% — which it would not, according to owner Terry Buck’s consultant, Ken Beldin, senior project engineer with Gwin Dobson & Foreman.

Actually, the former Lafferty Trucking Co. property is already 80% impervious, which constitutes a “non-conforming use” in zoning law, but the 4,000-square-foot canopy will not change the percentage, because it will be built overtop existing concrete and compacted aggregate, Beldin said.

The property totals 156,000 square feet, with impervious surfaces totaling 132,000 square feet, according to the application.

To get a special exception for expansion of a non-conforming use, the expansion mustn’t be a detriment to the neighborhood — and in this case, it would not, as the canopy would be built on the northeastern corner of the building, near the bridge that carries Burgoon Road over a set of railroad tracks, so that the structure couldn’t be seen from a residential area to the southwest, according to the application.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.