Position Paper by PALS Researcher Dr. John Bacher re the Need for Easements 02/09/08

Often there is a misunderstanding about Canadian and American approaches to land use planning that have served to frustrate efforts to compliment zoning in Ontario through such mechanisms as conservation easements. Limitations on zoning in the United States are self-imposed by the various state governments that are responsible for this situation. The state of Oregon gives a vivid example of a jurisdiction whose approach to land use planning was once a model for our province, but which was repealed not through constitutional challenges, but by political back lash.

In Ontario, the dramatic case of the Pickering Easements, which ultimately resulted in a court decision that forced the developer to pay the province for its court costs, illustrate how this mechanism can reinforce zoning. The province has also funded the Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation to compliment the strict provincially imposed zoning of this area (which like Niagara is in the Greenbelt), through the purchase of conservation easements.

An American land use planner, Tom Daniels, has eloquently explained how good land use planning and zoning is complimented by the use of conservation easements. He notes that there are a total of nine tools that government can use to encourage food land protection.

In Niagara, partly through the work of PALS, we have eight of the nine instruments that Daniels recommends be used in an effective land preservation tool kit. These are "comprehensive planning", "urban growth boundaries", "agricultural zoning", "purchase of development rights," (where a restrictive covenant i.e. easement, is placed on the land ) "agricultural districts", "preferential farmland taxation", "relief from water and sewer assessments", " a right-to-farm", and "agricultural economic development programs". The only important tool left out of the box in Niagara is conservation easements.

In his 1997 book, co-authored with Deborah Bowers, "Holding Our Ground", Daniels notes that, "Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is the only jurisdiction in the nation that has all nine of these farmland protection tools. In 1996, the American Farmland Trust recognized Lancaster County's farmland protection efforts with a national achievement award. According to Bob Wagner of the American Farmland Trust, Lancaster County is setting the pace for farmland preservation in the United States."

Like Niagara is within Canada, Lancaster County is one of the most productive farming regions in the United States. Daniel notes that, "It is the leading agricultural county not only in Pennsylvania but in the entire Northeast, with over $680 million a year in farm goods sold. It is also the nation's number one non- irrigated farming country."

Another similarity between Lancaster County and Niagara, whose populations are almost identical , is that its excellent farmland is under intense development pressure from sprawl since it lies only sixty miles west of Philadelphia, which is the fourth largest city in the United States. Every year, Daniel warns, its "suburbs creep closer."

In the past, Lancaster county appeared to be doomed to the bulldozer. This is a situation described in the book, "Garden Spot", by David J. Walbert, where he notes that, "In the early 1990s Lancaster County seemed to be hopelessly divided. On the one side businessmen and progressives insisted on the necessity and indeed the inevitably of growth...As Tom Daniels later recalled when he arrived in Lancaster in 1989, every acre seemed for sale....and yet, after 1990, the road to farmland preservation grew markedly easier...Farmers who had thought preservation a nice idea but impractical...including Larry Weaver, who had told the New Era in 1968 that farming was on the way out", had a different attitude." Walbert asks, "What made the difference?"

The answer is simple - conservation easements! These are now so desirable that there is a seven year waiting list to sell them to either the Lancaster County Preserve Board, or the Lancaster Farmland Trust, both largely funded through the State of Pennsylvania. The program Daniels stresses, "has softened opposition to agricultural zoning."

Like the situation in Niagara and its Greenbelt's permanent boundaries, in Lancaster County, easements are purchased "within the contiguous agriculture security zones to maintain a critical mass of farmland that would enable farm support businesses to thrive." Such strategic locations serve "as keystones to keep agricultural infrastructure viable."

Also, like the points system of the doomed 1994-95 Niagara Tender Fruit Lands Program, the Lancaster Farmland Trust , as its website notes, "has made preserving farms that are adjacent to or within one mile of an urban growth area a priority. By doing so, the Trust can assure that development is contained within these urban growth areas"

The Lancaster Farmland Trust has found that, "One of the most successful examples of preserving farms around the UGAs (urban growth areas) is seen in East Donegal Township, located in the eastern part of Lancaster County. Not only does East Donegal Township boast one of the highest concentrations of preserved farms in the county, but it has successfully preserved farms to contain development within its UGA. East Deonegal Township's UGA is flanked on nearly every side by preserved farms. (this is a term used to describe farmland protected through a conservation easement)./

Like the Greenbelt in Niagara, (although unfortunately not in the rest of the province, except for Burlington), the agricultural security zone of Lancaster County is up against secure urban growth boundaries. Daniels finds that this situation "reinforces the boundaries and makes leapfrog development less likely."

The Amish farm in the movie "Witness" is one of the preserved farms in Lancaster County protected under its easement program. When you view this drama, full of heroic efforts to overcome development pressures, you may appreciate some of the struggle PALS has been going through in the past several years to obtain a conservation easement program for Niagara. "