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Ways To Protect Land
Land is part of the earth. We did not create it. In a sense, we cannot own it; yet, legally, our name is on a title at the courthouse and that piece of ground belongs to us. There are quiet, persistent efforts underway to protect land. We outline some of these ways below.
Landowners: Your Rights on Oil & Gas Drilling
West Virginia landowners, including Gary Zuckett of WV Citizens Action, along with public interest lawyer Dave Mahon, have formed the Surface Owners' Rights Organziation, WV SORO, a new statewide group to help landowners deal with oil and gas companies who drill on their land. They hope to get some better laws and regulations passed. You can download or order their Surface Owners Guide to Oil and Gas at the WV SORO website, or give them a call at 304-346-8928.
January 2008: Electric Avenue - 240 Miles of High-Voltage Ugly?
Allegheny Energy is continuing with its attempt to cut another high-voltage power line over our mountains and through our communities. Don't let their quaint name – TrAIL, short for Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line – fool you. This proposed high-voltage powerline that would slash through the Potomac Highlands has mushroomed from a backyard nuisance into a national environmental controversy. In November, environmental and historic preservation groups asked for a rehearing of a federal decision letting new high voltage lines criss-cross the northeast US corridor from West Virginia as far as Ohio and New York, even where the states find they're not needed.
These corridors are based on a new provision attached by Congress to the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which allows electric companies to condemn right of ways using federal eminent domain powers in areas that are found to be electrically congested. These proposals provide a new market for some of the nation's oldest coal fired power plants—the same plants that have been cited for air pollution, and which demand coal, much of which is mined by mountaintop removal.
The land use problems add more ugliness to this already disturbing picture. Under these definitions, the entire Northeast is subject to condemnation to accommodate new power lines—even national forests, Civil War battlefields, wildlife areas and other places that people have worked for decades to preserve. Among the protesters in the Potomac Highlands is a Buddhist monastery in eastern Hampshire County, Bhavana Society, where the monks value their peace and quiet.
Chris Miller of the Piedmont Environmental Council, one of the organizations filing for rehearing, said, "In designating the first corridors, the Department of Energy failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Endangered Species Act. These environmental laws are important tools to protect human health, ecosystems and community values." See the PEC web site for the latest news.
"The power companies have told the Department of Energy they want these transmission line corridors stretching all the way to Ohio and West Virginia because of 'increasingly strict environmental controls' along the East Coast. But we can't allow power companies to exploit long-distance corridors in an attempt to literally run away from our most progressive environmental laws" said Cale Jaffe, Staff Attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.
"DOE's sweeping decision dramatically undermines state efforts to address global warming and other important environmental problems," said Mark Brownstein, an energy policy expert at Environmental Defense. "New interstate transmission lines are like superhighways for the oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants, and the federal government has made it a whole lot easier to put one in your backyard.
"Rather than take the time to study alternatives and work with states to craft a balanced energy future, DOE has rushed to a decision that favors big coal. There are better ways to do transmission planning, and we are hoping that DOE goes back to the drawing board and works with us, and others, to do it right."
Governments of Pennsylvania and Virginia have filed petitions for rehearing. However, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, in a State Journal article on Nov. 1, came out in favor of the powerline due to construction and power industry jobs he says will be created. Manchin has a coal industry background. However, Capon Valley powerline opponents have advice from retiring PSC ombudsman Billy Jack Gregg, and have organized several information and protest meetings. Second-home realtor Charlie Winfree points out that the powerlines harm West Virginia’s growing real estate industry. His analysis is on the Capon Valley Coalition's web page.
"We should all be ashamed to even be considering more long-term heavy investment in coal when we now know it’s most likely the biggest culprit in changing our climate, our children’s climate and the extermination of many species, quite possibly our own,"writes Winfree, who designated half the acreage in his development near Keyser as nature preserve. "Yes, parts of the WV economy may seem to depend on it; just as part of Colombia’s economy depends on cocaine, and part of Afghanistan’s economy depends on heroin poppies." Comparing these addictions might sound extreme, but note that scientists report that coal burning is contributing to the melting of the polar icecaps. We need to break the fossil fuel habit now.
January 2007: Wild and Wonderful West Virginia Beware: 500 KV Power Line Proposed
Northern Virginia horse country is up in arms over Dominion and Allegheny Power's proposal for a new 500-kV transmission line, a project they have dubbed "TrAIL" -- the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line. Late in 2006 over 4,000 citizens, including actor Robert Duvall of Faquier County, and U.S. Representatives Frank Wolf and Tom Davis, turned out at hearings to oppose the power line . The proposed line would have towers up to 177 feet tall and would damage publicly held open space, rural historic districts, open space easements, and the local economy. Piedmont Environmental Council put up weather balloons to show the route through Clarke, Fauquier, Frederick, Loudoun, Prince William, and Warren Counties in Virginia.
However, according to a map at Allegheny’s TrAIL website, a much longer portion would run through West Virginia's southern Hampshire County, northern Grant County (tying in with Mt. Storm power plant), the wild tip of western Maryland and Preston County before going on to the Pittsburgh area. Allegheny Power is the same utility that sold Blackwater Canyon to a private timber firm while the state was negotiating to protect it.
If actors and Congressmen are opposing it in Virginia, it can’t be good for us ordinary folks in West Virginia either. PEC contends that the power companies haven’t studied the alternative of building clean power stations closer to metropolitan areas -- they’d rather cut 100-foot swaths through pristine mountains and farms to build a new line.
A local citizens group has formed to fight this proposed powerline. The Capon Valley Coalition's website has all the ongoing and gory details of their fight.
Boats Cause River Shoreline Erosion
Fast boats and jet skis send out wakes, and the repeated wave action from them undercuts the shore so it falls in. This is a slow and steady nuisance to many. Property owners lose several inches or feet of their shoreline each year. The extra dirt clogs streams just like the dirt running off construction sites. Some landowners try laying rock to protect their banks, but this just speeds the flow, causing more erosion and mud flow downstream, setting up loud calls for dredging. For fish, it can be life threatening; it buries their eggs, covers up other stream bottom life that fish feed on, and clogs their gills.
The website BoatWakes.info cites several studies which say a typical speedboat wake washes away two slices of shore 1/200 inch thick. At 15 mph, it goes 1,300 feet per minute, which surprisingly is over a square foot of erosion per minute. An expensive loss for property owners and deadly to life in the river and Bay. If you're out on the river in an area deep enough for speedboats, see if the river edge is eroded and if landowners have laid down rock barriers. What’s the cure? There is none, but it would help if boats would simply slow down. If anyone out there has a newsletter, or mailing list of waterfront landowners, could you alert landowners to the problem, and ask boaters to SLOW DOWN?
Conservation Easements
A landowner voluntarily files a document in the courthouse called an conservation easement, which restricts later development and subdivision. Some owners allow, say, 10 out of 100 acres to be developed and the rest kept in forest or farmland. Some allow for timber cutting on all or part of the land. The easement runs with the land, applying to all subsequent owners unless a future judge overturns it, or the government takes it by eminent domain. Usually the owner names a nonprofit group called a land trust to supervise compliance in the future. Because the owner has given away some of his or her land rights to the land trust, this is considered a tax-deductible donation. Property and estate taxes can be reduced because the easement reduces the value of the land.
A "postmortem easement" filed within a year after a landowner's death helps the heirs by greatly reducing inheritance taxes. In a "bargain sale", a conservation easement makes the land less expensive for the buyer while reducing capital gains taxes for the seller. You should ask your accountant and attorney to explain how these tax savings will work best for you.
Both of these kinds of deals were facilitated in the past three years by the Cacapon & Lost River Land Trust, which operates in the Capon, Lost, and North River watershed of Hardy, Hampshire and Morgan Counties and now has facilitated landowners in permanently protecting over 6,000 acres in the watershed. Nancy Ailes credits enthusiastic landowner and hunter Carlton Mills for spreading the good word among his neighbors, who were eager to participate once they found that it is possible to protect their land and still use it. Because of his work, over 4,000 contiguous acres near Yellow Spring West Virginia have been preserved for hunting. Contact:
Nancy Ailes, Cacapon Lost River Land Trust, 304-856-1010.
Lavonne Paden, Land Trust of Eastern Panhandle, 304-754-6955
Beth Wheatley, WV Land Trust, 304-346-7788
Kelly Watkinson, Director of Headwaters Conservation, Potomac Conservancy, Watkinson@potomac.org, 540-667-3606
Farmland Protection Program
Farm protection boards can get money from a real estate transfer tax or a federal program. They pay farmers for easements to protect "prime and unique farming soils." To find out where your county stands and whom to contact, call Pat Bowen, conservation specialist for USDA in Phillipi, 304-457-1118
Forest Legacy Program
A third of West Virginia, from I-81 to the west edge of Preston, Tucker, Randolph and Pocahontas Counties, is proposed for US Forest Service Legacy funds, to pay for easements which will protect land for timber production. Applications will be received as soon as the national office approves the program. Approved landowners will develop and follow forest management plans.
Clint Hogbin of Berkeley County, who comes from a long line of farmers, has led efforts to create state laws and county farmland boards to preserve the disappearing farmland. Now, Clint and the Land Trust of the Eastern Panhandle are working on saving forests too. Federal money is available through the US Forest Service in the Forest Legacy Program to purchase conservation easements from willing forest landowners. A conservation easement allows landowners to keep on owning the land and compensates them for restrictions on development rights.
WV Division of Forestry, WV Nature Conservancy and The Conservation Fund are pondering which mountains of WV will be eligible for forest protection as Forest Legacy Areas. Clint asked area forest lovers to email the Conservation Fund and ask them to include the forests of North Mountain, Sleepy Creek Mountain, Third Hill Mountain, Back Creek Watershed, Cacapon Mountain, Cacapon River Watershed, Short Mountain, and Sideling Hill Mountain.
Please send an email to wvforests@conservationfund.org and ask for these forest areas and mountains of the Eastern Panhandle to be included as a Forest Legacy Area. Public meetings were held in March and more are planned. Contact Clint Hogbin at crhogbin@cs.com and the Eastern Panhandle Land Trust at: Margarita Provenzano margarita69@peoplepc.com. For more details on meeting locations or more information about the Forest Legacy Program Assessment of Need for the State of West Virginia contact toll free 1-866-744-2344, or visit West Virginia's Forest Legacy website and click on WV Forest Legacy Program. For general information on the Forest Legacy Program visit the US Forest Service's Forest Legacy website.
Historic Buildings
In Fall 2003 the Hampshire County Historical Society sponsored another in a series of historic house tours. These are always a fun way to spend a fall day, getting to know more of your neighbors and catching a glimpse of history into the bargain. This year the tour featured buildings in the Yellow Spring area: the Octagon house, the old Willow Schoolhouse, the Asa Cline House B&B (which is benignly haunted), and six other lovely churches and homes.
Renovating and occupying an old "home place" instead of building a new one helps keep hunting areas and wildlife paths intact. Building a new house in virgin forest removes 18 acres of hunting area from use, since you cannot fire a gun with 500 feet of a home in West Virginia. This summer there were numerous black bear sightings on Cacapon River Road, and the first ever sighting on the hiking paths in the Cacapon Springs Resort. This is probably due to the sale and subsequent development of thousands of acres of Westvaco land along Route 259 that was heavily advertised in the Washington Post. We were lucky that this area was subdivided into "only" 20-acre plots, and not 10- or 5-acre ones. The impact on the local wildlife was certainly alarming as it was. The specter of meeting a bear at 4:00 in the afternoon (or any time) was a bit disturbing. The last time I have seen a black bear on River Road was at 6:00 in the morning five years ago.
Maintaining an old house isn't for everyone, but it can be very rewarding. Rescuing an old house from demolition or decay is a bit like helping a damsel in distress. The house has a personality one has to adapt to. After all, it was here before you were even the proverbial gleam in your parents' eyes!
At this time there are officially only six structures in Hampshire County on the National Register of Historic Places, but many more have the potential to be added. This "Historic Property" status gives some protection from road widening and other government projects, and some loan and grant money is available for repairs. Homes are eligible that meet one or more of these criteria:
- Are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history;
- Are associated with the lives of people significant in our past;
- Embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction;
- Have yielded, or are likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.
The West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office's Division of Culture and History (www.wvculture.org) maintains a separate list of historic properties and can help with the detailed paperwork needed for the National Register. Their National Register Coordinator, Alan Rowe, can be reached at 304-558-0220 or at alan.rowe@wvculture.org.
Resources
The Forest Service's Recreation, Wilderness, Urban Forest, and Demographic Trends Research Group has done a Survey of Southern Appalachian Resident's Priorities for National Forest Management. This survey is very interesting -- it shows that even people who rarely visit forests still value them highly in their natural state
The Land Trust Alliance is the national leader of the private land conservation movement, promoting voluntary land conservation across the country.
The Potomac Conservancy: Want to know more about the Potomac watershed, and how to take care of your land and ultimately protect it? Potomac Conservancy has an office now in downtown Winchester, Virginia at 19 West Cork Street Suite 201. Contact Kelly Watkinson, Director of Headwaters Conservation at Watkinson@potomac.org or 540-667-3606. The office has informative pamphlets for landowners and residents about how to live and work alongside rivers and streams, and maintains a network with area groups dealing with nature and environmental issues. The Conservancy works with local land trusts and willing private owners to put conservation easements on land .
The West Virginia Land Trust is protecting the lands that give West Virginia its distinctive character.
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