You don’t have to be a longtime resident of the Eastern Panhandle to see the big changes in the landscape. Not long ago, as housing prices hit astronomical highs in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, people moved to West Virginia to take advantage of the more affordable cost of living. Many continue to commute back in to the metropolitan area for their jobs. For orchardists and farmers, it became much more profitable to sell their land to developers than to farm. Acres of land that used to be covered with fruit trees are now covered with houses spaced almost as closely together as the trees were. The new shopping centers that have followed offer a vast array of restaurants, stores, and other retail outlets that Jefferson County residents once had to drive out of state to patronize.
According to the West Virginia Farmland Conservation Board, in Berkeley County almost 1,000 acres of farmland a year has been developed into subdivisions since 2000. At the height of the building boom, it might have seemed that what was left of rural Jefferson County would soon be gone.
But that time of residential growth also witnessed huge growth in the acreage of land in Jefferson County preserved through conservation easements—a sign of a maturing conservation effort here. Several nonprofit organizations now work to preserve farmland, orchards, or other types of open space. The Land Trust of the Eastern Panhandle, Berkeley and Jefferson County Farmland Protection Boards, the Nature Conservancy, Potomac Conservancy, the National Park Service, and the Shepherdstown Battlefield Protection Association, among others, act separately and cooperatively to identify appropriate land and develop conservation strategies.
Sometimes that means finding the funding to purchase conservation easements—which means the development rights to a property are purchased and extinguished, but the landowner keeps their land. County, state, and federal funds are available in through various programs, and donations from private individuals are important sources. Other easements are acquired when landowners donate their development rights outright.
The achievements of these groups are impressive. According to Peter Fricke, chairman of the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board, since 2002 the Jefferson County FPB has purchased conservation easements on 1,754 acres on 17 farms. With recent easement on 114 acres in Shanghai, the Berkeley County Farmland Protection Program has approved 23 conservation easements over the past four years, conserving 2,068 acres. Another easement on 195 acres in Berkeley has been approved and is expected to close before the end of the year.
How Land Conservation Happens
When driving around the area, it’s possible to see signs—literally—of these conservation arrangements. Some landowners post signs on their land indicating that their property is part of a farmland trust or easement and is “protected forever.” Newspaper articles occasionally report such transactions. But more often than not, conservation happens quietly.
The majority of land conservation is achieved through easements, a legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or other third party. Easements are designed to be flexible and can be tailored to a landowner’s particular interests and the unique characteristics of the property. The landowner keeps the property’s title and can still use the land as before, bound by specific voluntary restrictions. And sometimes an easement will allow the property to be divided for limited development, such as a lot or two for family use. Or they will specify that certain activities, such as clear-cut timbering, will no longer be allowed. The terms are negotiated between the property owner and the easement holder. These restrictions are what constitute the easement.
The landowner still owns this property and can live on it, sell it, or will it to heirs. The landowner also can use the non-restricted portions of the land as he or she sees fit and sell these portions separately from the restricted portions bound by the conservation easement. The easement on the restricted portion of the land is permanent and affixed as a deed to the land, however, and all future owners are legally bound to abide by it.
Peter Fricke, chair of JCFPB, characterized the landowners this way. “Jefferson County landowners and farmers are dedicated individuals who work very hard to make their living, but this does not mean that they all share the same values toward protecting farmland for future use. Some view land as a commodity to buy, sell, or rent as market forces dictate. Others view their farms as a heritage asset that they wish to pass on to their family or to another farmer; we have a number of Bicentennial Farms in the county, and these farms demonstrate the attachment to the land of individual families. Still other landowners wish to protect their land as farmland, recognizing its importance for food production, water quality, and the quality of life of everyone in the county.”
Landowners interested in conservation easements tend to be motivated by their desire to keep their land as open space or farmland or to maintain areas for wildlife habitats. The vast majority of conservation easements in America—which to add up to some 37 million acres—are donated by the landowner. Their financial incentives can include tax deductions for the value of the easement, lower property tax rates, and estate planning benefits.
Not everyone, though, is able to make an outright donation. After all, you have to have a make a lot of money to fully take advantage of the value of the donation of development rights—the donation can be worth from several hundred thousand to millions of dollars. So entities like the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Boards purchase development rights for some easements. (That’s as technical as we’ll get here; the details are best left to representatives from the conservation organization to explain!)
Two concerns have arisen wherever purchase-of-development-rights programs, or PDRs, are enacted. First is that money used to buy easements might be better spent buying actual parkland. Easements can bring many benefits, but public access is not necessarily one of them. Another concern: In some states, they are criticized for buying development rights from landowners who would preserve their land even without the money.
The Conservation Players
The Land Trust of the Eastern Panhandle (LTEP), says it president, Grant Smith, co-holds easements on 2,141 acres. “Most, but not all of that is co-held with either the Berkeley or Jefferson County Farmland Protection boards,” he said. “All of our acreage in Jefferson County is co-held with the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board.” LTEP, established in 1994, is a private nonprofit, tax-exempt group founded and governed by a volunteer board comprising residents from Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan counties. Their funding comes primarily through donations from individuals.
The Berkley and Jefferson County Farmland Protection boards are government entities, created as a result of the Voluntary Farmland Protection Act passed by the West Virginia Legislature in 2000. Established by their county commissioners, Berkeley and Jefferson’s FPBs were among the first three in the state; now there are FPBs in 18 West Virginia counties. The Voluntary Farmland Protection Act outlined specific guidelines for each FPB to follow, including the methods of farmland protection, the valuation of a conservation easement, the criteria for easements acquisition, and the use of land after acquiring a conservation easement.
LTEP and the farmland protection boards also work to preserve Civil War battlefields and related sites. Five of the 12 easements co-held by the LTEP and JCFPB conserve 301 acres of farmland along the route Confederate forces took on their way to and from the fighting in Antietam in 1862. Three of these easements are in the area of the Battle of Shepherdstown. For these easements, LTEP and JCFPB teamed up with the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association, a nonprofit focused on preserving the battle’s sites as parkland and conservation lands.
The Potomac Conservancy, a regional Maryland-based organization that holds easements throughout the Potomac and Shenandoah river watersheds, also co-holds easements in the Eastern Panhandle; some are co-held with Berkeley County FPB. And the Civil War Preservation Trust, which operates throughout the states in which the Civil War occurred, is active here, too. The Nature Conservancy in West Virginia, the largest conservation organization in the state and one of its oldest, also is active in the Panhandle. It owns the popular Yankhauer Nature Preserve, which is managed by Potomac Valley Audubon Society.
The organizations have different approaches to land conservation, each tailored to their particular mission. Said Rodney Bartgis, state director of the Nature Conservancy, “The Nature Conservancy targets lands it has scientifically identified as being of high biological and ecological significance.” These are the lands, says Bartgis, that are important to TNC’s conservation mission.
“We then approach the landowners and develop relationships with them,” said Bartgis. “On occasion, it occurs that a landowner of a targeted property will reach out to us first.”
LTEP’s Smith said, “The Land Trust sees its role as a proactive one. We identify large landowners in areas of interest and contact landowners there. We also pursue leads that we get from individuals and other organizations.”
Landowners interested in developing an easement plan with one of the farmland protection boards must apply to them. “The JCFPB receives some five or six applications in each application cycle, some of which do not qualify under our criteria,” Jefferson County FPB’s Fricke.
Land Economy and Conservation
Like most of the rest of the country, Jefferson County is experiencing a slow-down in the real estate market. Greg Didden, of Greg Didden Associates, said this is reflected in the small number of large tracts of land currently on the market—the type of parcels that would be prime for development. Citing to the Metropolitan Regional Information System, a multilisting system, Didden said, “In the residential section for 100-plus acres, there are only four listings; under land of 100-plus acres, there are only seven listings. Considering the total listings in these two areas, there have only been two sales out of 11 listings in all of 2007.”
One might think that the slow real estate market could be a boon to land conservation organizations. After all, if landowners can’t sell their land to developers, they might be more willing to consider a conservation easement. However, this is not the case, according to Fricke. “We have not seen any larger tracts of land being offered to the board because of a slowdown in development,” he said. “Since 2002, the JCFPB has purchased conservation easements on 1,754 acres on 17 farms. Of these farms only five have protected more than 100 acres, with a median size of some 90 acres,” he added.
“The smallest farm offered for easement has been 20 acres,” said Fricke. “The average value of a conservation easement, that is the difference between the value of land sold for development and land sold as farmland, in Jefferson County has been $5,340/acre and has changed little over the past five years.”
“It would seem logical that the slowdown in sales of larger tracts would benefit the Land Trust,” said LTEP’s Grant Smith. “But it has not happened. One developer whom we contacted about possibly putting an easement on a portion of his land adjacent to a battlefield said simply that he was sitting on the land for the time being and not doing anything.”
Further, as the value of real estate has declined somewhat in the slower market, so has the value of easements. This, said Smith, “would reduce the incentive for anyone looking for a tax deduction or for a payment, for example, from the Farmland Protection Board.”
Bartgis had a similar view. “It is very rare that a landowner makes such a decision unless they had a conservation inclination to start with. The few times it has happened have been great, but we've not seen it occur in West Virginia this downturn. Also, there are very few dollars for buying easements and those programs that have money, like Jefferson County's farmland protection program, already have significant backlogs.”
A slower real estate market also has meant less money for land conservation programs because farmland trust funding comes from a tax on real estate transactions. “Our Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board receives money from the transfer taxes on property sales and from cash donations from individuals wishing to support our work,” said Fricke. “When the property market booms, the money we have for conservation easement purchases rises, and conversely when the property market is down, so our receipts decline.”
Greg Didden sees something else on the horizon that will surely influence how large tracts are developed in Jefferson County: the proposed zoning ordinance due to go into effect in 2008. The proposed ordinance would reduce the number of homes built on subdivided land in rural parts of the county. “It used to be that a landowner would get a large tract of land through the planning process and get the subdivision rights guaranteed, then sell it to the developer. The land is much more valuable once it’s made it through that process,” said Didden. “But that’s not happening anymore. Developers are pulling back from this type of market. They don’t want to buy land, and they also are not warehousing it for future development,” he opined.
Another good sign for land conservation? Not necessarily, according to Smith. “If they do reduce the permissible density in the rural zone, that would reduce the value of easements,” he said. This is because the value of the easement is based on the value of development rights, which would be lower on land zoned for one house per 20 acres than on land zone one house per three acres.
Bartgis does not think the zoning ordinance will affect easements in either direction. “Broader family/landowner financial issues are more significant,” he said. And even with large-lot zoning, donating or selling a conservation easement would have trouble competing against the marketplace. The people who enter in conservation easements will still be those who are most motivated to do so for personal reasons.
Fricke has a different take on the new zoning ordinance. “I hope that it may have the effect of more conservation easements being offered for purchase or donated to the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board,” he said. “More importantly, my reading of the proposed rules suggests that the county commission is promoting the maintenance of large blocks of land which can be farmed more efficiently.”
By Fricke’s reasoning, the zoning ordinance would help achieve conservation goals whether or not it results in more easements. Larger blocks of land, he said, offer greater water catchment areas to recharge the county's water table than would be possible if the land were developed for subdivisions. “So both farmers and non-farmers would benefit from these proposals,” he said.
Conservation Groups of Eastern Panhandle
Berkeley County Farmland Protection Board
P.O. Box 1243
Martinsburg , WV 25402
www.wvfarmlandprotection.org/co_berk_main.cfm
Phone: (304) 260-9250
Civil War Preservation Trust
1331 H Street N.W., Suite 1001
Washington, D.C. 20005
(202) 367-1861
www.civilwar.org
Land Trust of the Eastern Panhandle
PO Box 2240
Martinsburg, WV 25401
www.landtrustepwv.org
Potomac Conservancy
8601 Georgia Avenue
Suite
612
Silver Spring, MD 20910
www.potomac.org
(301) 608-1188
Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board
150 Burr Blvd., East
Suite 200
Kearneysville, WV 25430
304/728-3051 ext. 239
www.jeffersoncountywv.org/ farmland
Shepherdstown Battlefield Protection Association
PO Box 3359
Shepherdstown, WV 25443
www.battleofshepherdstown.org
The Nature Conservancy
P.O. Box 250
Elkins, WV 26241
(304) 637-0160
www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/westvirginia
