How Preservation Pays?
(Page 3 of 8)
August/September 1995
by Molly Miller
Does Farmland Protection Pay?
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An acre of developed land generates more money than an acre of agricultural land. This is hard to refute, but it's a simplistic justification for sprawling tract housing across productive land. Not only does it ignore the intangible costs of destroying open space, wildlife, nature, and recreational space, but it ignores the costs of providing services to developments. Several AFT studies have refuted the conclusion that developing farmland necessarily leads to higher revenues than if the land were preserved. Residential development undoubtedly increases the tax base, but what is overlooked is the cost of the accompanying public services which have been found in several cases to exceed the revenue generated by development. On the other hand, while privately owned farm and open lands do not raise as much revenue, the cost of public services for farmland is so minimal, AFT studies conclude, that in many cases it pays more not to develop them. The studies, conducted in the Northeast, challenge the idea that development is always the best way to create a solid economic base for a community.
Of course, AFT is not advocating that all open land be preserved or arguing that development is always bad, but that we strike a guided balance between the two. Obviously, California has different needs than Massachusetts. Simply because of the density of the population, the East has taken more steps toward preservation programs and mixing rural and urban living with a little more balance. Cities began to encroach on open lands more and earlier in the East. New England has protected nearly 1.5 million acres, more land than any other region in the nation.
Private Options for Preserving Land
You will not want to take steps to preserve your land from development if you are unwilling to forfeit the potential for substantial profits when the developers come calling to put in a subdivision. You will not want to take steps to preserve your land if you are 100 percent opposed to regulations of any kind, though preservation regulations are more flexible and amendable than you might imagine. Here are some things you can do privately, without passing laws or restructuring zoning. You still do have to work with a land trust or some kind of conservation agency. Land trusts operate in all 50 states as well as Puerto Rico, and are nonprofit organizations that protect land for its natural, recreational, scenic, historical, or productive value. Trusts simply work with landowners who want to prevent their land from being developed.
Conservation Easements are the fastest growing method for protecting land. Private property owners voluntarily donate or sell conservation easements, also called development rights, to a conservation organization (usually a land trust) or government agency that has been established in a particular region for this purpose. If you take out a conservation easement on your land, or on a portion of your land, you still own your land and you may use it, sell it, bequeath it, etc. With a conservation easement you simply give up your option to subdivide the land and develop it, and you give up the option to sell to anyone with that intention. The rights to development are held or sold by the conservation organization.
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