Easement numbers reportedly growing
County under its new easement program — funded by $8.3 million in bonds voters approved in November.
Unlike southwestern Travis County, where the safeguarding of aquifers and endangered species has driven conservation efforts for decades, these new easement applications are in an area not typically the target of protection.
Organizers of easement programs, both Travis County’s and a long-standing one by the federal government, said there has been a recent spike in easements.
“The whole idea is to try to protect some of the land so not all of Travis County is developed, and they’re looking particularly for the ag-type lands,” said Rose Farmer, who runs the county’s easement program. “That’s why many of them are along the east side.”
Four of the nine applications received this year by Travis County are for properties in the eastern part of the county, she said.
Seven properties in the eastern part of the county have applied this year for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service’s program, up from the usual one or two, said Claude Ross, a natural resources specialist with the program.
Beall, along with several other landowners, is working with the Bastrop-based Pines and Prairies Land Trust to secure three easements totaling 600 acres, which, if approved, will cost the county $700,000, said land trust Executive Director Melanie Snyder. With 600 more acres nearby already under easements by the county and federal government, Pines and Prairies has an ultimate goal of helping preserve 4,000 acres along U.S. 290 between Elgin and Manor, Snyder said.
Ask Wayne Lundgren, a farmer with multiple tracts in the area, why he applied for an easement on his 200 acre plot, and he’ll be blunt: “It’s the right thing to do.”
He said his plot, with pipelines and utilities already built in, could fetch $1.6 million commercially, but he’s applying for a conservation easement instead, at a cost of $250,000 to the county.
“I could go sell my property and turn around my financial situation like that, and that’ll help me. But what will that do for the future?” Lundgren said.
The City of San Antonio has had a robust easement program, aimed at protecting the Edwards Aquifer, since 2005, when voters approved a ⅛cent sales tax to pay $90 million for what ended up being 90,000 acres
of Travis County’s easement program of easements in Bexar, Medina and Uvalde counties, said Grant Ellis, the special projects manager for the city’s Edwards Aquifer Protection Program.
Whatever their purpose, easements are a cheap way to preserve land, costing about a third as much as buying land outright, said Laura Huffman, director of the Nature Conservancy of Texas, one of the largest backers of easements in the state.
“I’m not surprised that private landowners are stepping up. It’s a tool that we have needed to introduce in that part of the county for some time,” Huffman said.