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Woman turns to Richmond County to preserve grandfather's farm Date published: 8/10/2009
BY FRANK DELANO Like many people in the Northern Neck, Sharon Faina loves her land. Now she has helped create a new way to protect it forever. She calls her 23 acres on Lancaster Creek in Richmond County "a true environmentalist dream property: a bluff overlooking the waterfront, a tidal pond, marsh, swamp, upland wooded area and former cropland now planted in pine trees." But when she started exploring ways to protect the property with a conservation easement, she found little interest from state agencies or conservation groups. "I was looking everywhere--The Nature Conservancy, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation--but nobody wanted to deal with 23 acres," she said. Finally she turned to the Northern Neck Land Conservancy and the Richmond County Board of Supervisors. "I know this very special parcel of Richmond County will be safe as long as my children, my husband and I have control of it. However, it needs to be protected for the future. Please help me do that," she asked the county in a May letter. After finding that holding conservation easements presented no obvious problems or burdens to the county, the supervisors voted unanimously in June to co-hold Faina's easement with the NNLC and to establish policies for holding future easements. In so doing, Richmond County joins Albemarle, Clarke, Fauquier and Goochland as the only counties in the state to accept the easements that prevent or restrict future development of open-space land. The easements, said Richmond County Administrator William E. Duncanson, are "the ultimate protection of property rights. They allow the current property owner to determine what will happen to that property in perpetuity." The easements, said Duncanson, "are the only sure way to protect land. Some people think zoning can do do that, but zoning is subject to change by a vote of the next board of supervisors. The easements guarantee what will be there with no decrease in local tax revenue from the property." Northumberland County may follow Richmond County's lead. County Administrator Kenny Eads said Northumberland's supervisors will discuss holding conservation easements at their meeting next month in Heathsville.
Date published: 8/10/2009
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