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Testimony on Northampton County Open Space Initiative

Given by Al Wurth, Chair of the Lehigh Valley Group of the Sierra Club
June 24, 2003

The Sierra Club is a national environmental organization founded over 100 years ago, with over half a million members nationwide, and over 1000 members in the Lehigh Valley. The Sierra Club has several recommendations in regard to implementing the county Open Space Initiative. They are presented below, first in outline form, and followed with more detailed explanations of each suggestion. The recommendations are in three areas, General Goals; Planning and Decision Guidelines; and Priority Sites and Areas for Preservation.

General Goals

Planning and Decision Guidelines

Priority Sites and Areas for Preservation

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General Goals

Open Space Initiative -- A Good Start, But Only A Start

While we applaud the efforts of the county to recognize and protect its assets, we would be remiss if we didn't mention that true protection of open space, the kind of ecologically sensitive areas envisioned in the Open Space Initiative, requires a comprehensive plan for the long term stability of the county as a bioregion with characteristic mix of natural and agricultural and developed systems. The Open Space Initiative is a welcome addition, but the Sierra Club and all advocates of environmental quality recognize that 21st Century planning should design and protect our natural treasures, our historic communities and our agricultural productivity. A desirable mix of uses and places, of development and protection, of tradition and progress can be had in Northampton County, but it will not happen automatically. “Don't Californicate our Pennsylvania countryside.” The county should have a long-term target for proportions of land use, with development rights allocated to protect that. The country and state know all too well, and the public support for the Open Space Initiative recognizes what overbuilding, suburban sprawl, abandoned cities and lost agricultural production do to communities. States like Oregon, and Pennsylvania counties like Lancaster have taken the initiative to protect their existing mix of land uses while encouraging development. They protect all their riches, natural and economic, and reduce the negative impact of ruinous land speculation. Northampton County should do much more, and the leaders of this Open Space Initiative have taken a good first step but much more can and should be done.

Use the Physical Map, Not the Political Map

One of the keys to understanding the task before us in implementing the Northampton County Open Space Initiative and Parks 2010 Plan might best be framed in terms of maps and what I describe for my students as mental maps. When we think of the county, we place a mental map that is best termed political. The county itself is defined by lines on a map. With that is a complex of municipalities and a network of roads, railroads, utilities and settlement patterns imposed on this area over our history. But the county also has a physical map that exists and existed prior to and independent of our political maps. It is the network of natural features and lands, waterways, vegetation patterns, geology, and complex ecosystems that predates our arrival here.

Our preference for and focus on the political map reflects our prejudices, but does not make this physical map disappear. For the Open Space Initiative we need to redirect our attention to that physical map, to the existing world that we and our predecessors have moved into.

Don't Confuse the Three Separate Parts of the Initiative

While the three arms of the open space effort should be well integrated, the current initiative on ecologically sensitive lands should not be confused with or encroached on by the other two purposes. The explicit division of the open space initiative into three divisions, parks, agricultural and environmentally sensitive along with separate budgets reflects the legislators' and the voters' belief that the three separate areas reflect distinct goals.

It's Not Just About Scenery

As a member of the Sierra Club, one of the oldest and largest environmental groups in the country, state and county, the group whose original founders led the fight to preserve the Crown Jewels of the American landscape like Yosemite, Grand Canyon and other parks that are the envy of the world, I hope, as you would expect, that we protect the wildest, the most scenic and the most distinctive natural areas of the county, but I would also remind the council that ecology and environmental protection are not only about picture postcards. Some of the most critical areas are not necessarily tourism or even recreation destinations. They are ecologically sensitive and critical areas that provide habitat, water quality and critical roles in larger ecosystems that will suffer without them. Just as the areas surrounding our great national parks need to be protected to sustain the park ecosystems, so also do some less glamorous but nevertheless critical areas need to be protected.

A Vision for the Whole County

This is a vision of future of county as a whole and not just bits of decoration on an economic development plan.

Investing in Open Space is a Benefit, Not a Cost

One of the elementary principles of preserving a quality environment as designated by the noted ecologist Eugene Odum is the recognition that our communities' acres of "developed" land depend on many more acres of agricultural, timber and other resource lands to supply their raw materials, and on even more acres of land in near-natural states to provide essential support systems of air and water supply and waste processing. All these less developed and "undeveloped" areas provide absolutely essential services.

While Northampton county with its hundreds of thousands of people is already a long way from self-sufficiency, it is important to recognize that continuing development also means ever-increasing dependence on long and costly supply lines and ever more extensive substitution of expensive man-made life support systems to replace the natural and agricultural systems that are lost to urban development.

So, while the obvious costs of land acquisition in dollars will limit the impact of any land/development rights expenditures, it is important to remember that "setting aside" or protecting ecologically sensitive lands provides important benefits in terms of life support for already developed lands and the people who use them. Whether it's aquifer recharge, flood or erosion control, wildlife habitat, or CO2 sequestration, or any of the many other services provided by natural areas, these services are invaluable and represent a significant part of the return on the county's investment in protecting lands from development.

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Planning and Decision Guidelines

County Determination of Regional Priorities

Avoid piecemeal efforts. Emphasize contiguous tracts and integration of acquired areas.

Reward Municipalities that Have Their Own Commitments

Avoid the "give us the grant or we'll clear this woods" incentives for municipalities. Reward the municipalities that have their own commitments, efforts, etc, and support the laggards by giving incentives for cooperative efforts. Make funds more accessible for communities that have met criteria for set asides of their own, with local efforts in zoning, stream protection, staffing for open space planning and management, etc.

Open space plans proposed by communities that cooperate in regional planning initiatives with adjacent municipalities should be given priority over initiatives from individual government units.

Coordinate All Expenditures with Planning and Zoning Initiatives

All land or development rights acquisition efforts should coordinate all the purchases with county-wide planning and zoning initiatives, as well as municipal plans and zoning maps (no sense setting aside if surrounding areas aren't compatible).

It would be foolish to attempt to protect or set aside modest areas of land using the monies from the Open Space Bond Funds and then to undercut the purpose of that spending with inappropriate or insufficient planning and zoning controls that are too weak to preserve the character of adjoining areas.

Connect or Coordinate with Private Protected Lands

Acquisitions should connect or coordinate with private protected lands to create designated greenways and districts.

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Integrate with County Parks Plan

County parks plan should be compatible with and supportive of land preservation.County park recreational model should complement environmental and farmland preservation coordinating three components to realize synergies. Plan in advance to avoid scenarios where left hand doesn’t know what right hand is doing.

Recreation Should Not Drive Choices

Keep the emphasis on ecology and integration and downplay recreation, especially active or facility-based recreation in favor of passive recreation like hiking, etc.

Note emphasis on nature areas in survey, but the demotion of priority in LVPC report. Both citizens' and ecologically preferred approach is natural areas; legislators can do good and do well.

Official Decisions by Elected Legislators

Official decisions should be made by elected legislators choosing among alternatives proposed, evaluated and rated by staff.

Natural Areas Can Speak for Themselves

One advantage of the ecologically sensitive lands acquisition program is that the designation of appropriate sites is less subject to geographic and population distribution pressures. The critical sites are unique and readily identifiable, and the political pressure to distribute benefits to all populations and regions within the county does not present itself so directly as it does in recreation, park and even farmland parcel identification. Many of the ecologically sensitive lands and natural areas are already identified in the studies by the Nature Conservancy and the LVPC. More basically, in simple terms, you can put tennis courts all over the county, but the major waterways, wildlife habitat, wetlands, state-protected lands and other critical lands of significance are where they are, and the county as a whole is served by protecting them. In effect, these decisions are about the county as a whole community and its natural heritage and environmental quality.

Leverage Funds with Tax and Assessment Policy

Creative funding approaches might make the dollars go farther. Purchase of development rights rather than actual land ownership addresses both the issue of protecting current use and the issue of maintaining tax rolls. Combining county funds with future tax streams might allow the county to investigate public-private arrangements which would offer not money but reduced tax rates on important less developable tracts of private property in exchange for development rights. Leveraging the actual cash with future tax relief could multiply the amount of protected land each year, while not completely removing the parcels from the tax base.

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Capital Fund for Asset Acquisition, Not Operating Costs

While the planners recommendations to the county are significant and represent important tasks the county should address, care should be taken to prevent the obvious "development" parts of the future management of the parks and county protected areas from coming from the open space bonds.

First the fund itself should be a capital not an operating budget, and as such should be used to acquire property (assets) that otherwise would not be economically feasible to purchase.

This means also that normal management, operating and development costs, from road building to signage to staffing should not be funded with these monies.

To that extent, the County should use these funds for acquisition of assets. No consulting, management, studies, improvements, parking lots.

Synergy with Private and other Government Conservation Efforts

To this end, we also urge that the county continue its efforts using public agencies, and work to augment and support rather than supplant or divert the efforts of private institutions. Public-private cooperation should be additive, not competitive or alternative. Management of public lands should not be contracted to private institutions, and taxpayer dollars from the Open Space Initiative should not be provided to purchase lands or development rights that would not be owned by the taxpayers. The strength and initiative of non-governmental conservation efforts should not be redirected by public monies, and a complementary, cooperative relationship between county government and other land protection initiatives should be the rule. The county should neither replace private conservation efforts nor fund them; instead it should help coordinate and enhance the cooperation among the many institutional actors pursuing open space protection. The same approach applies to other levels of government, national, state, and municipal. County open space funds should not be used to replace other government initiatives and commitments.

Serial Process with Stages and Public Input at Each Stage

We recommend a several step process with public input at each stage, including more concrete proposals for criteria, lists of ecologically sensitive properties with priorities, etc.

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Priority Sites and Areas for Preservation

Recognize the Unique Position of Jacobsburg Center and the Bushkill Watershed.

Follow Up on the Already Identified Sites

Follow up on the already identified sites in the Natural Areas Inventories, the recommendations from the LVPC, and previous Sierra Club recommendations.

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