By EMILY BATTLE

Fredericksburg City Council members Billy Withers and Kerry Devine went to Spotsylvania County yesterday to present the latest version of a conservation easement proposed to protect the city's riverside land.

Bob Hagan, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, called the new agreement "constructive."

He said it addressed Spotsylvania concerns about building future roads and utility lines across the river.

But some of his fellow supervisors had concerns that the easement is a permanent, largely unchangeable document, and about the city's request for money if upstream counties want to be named as easement holders.

City officials presented their neighbors with the first version of the agreement in April 2004.

A conservation easement is a way of permanently selling development rights on land to a group that can help the landowner manage and protect it.

Fredericksburg officials propose that the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and The Nature Conservancy be the primary holders of the city's easement on the nearly 5,000 acres it owns along the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers.

In return, the city would get $1.6 million to endow a river-steward position, plus $300,000 to survey the land.

One of the biggest points of contention in the original easement--and one that continues to divide City Council members--is that it would give the two organizations a say in how the localities use the land in the future.

The new draft of the document takes those outside groups from a controlling role to an advisory role in deciding whether roads or utility lines can be built across the river in the future.

Under the new agreement, building a road across the river would take a super-majority vote of the localities on either side of the river, plus the city.

Spotsylvania Supervisor Vince Onorato asked why the proposal's new version would demand payment from the counties if they want to be co-holders of the easement, along with the two conservation groups.

City officials haven't specified how much they'd want.

"This comes as a surprise for me to hear that citizens of Spotsylvania County are having to pay for a conservation easement when it's not even their land," Onorato said.