Conservation easements at risk in Boulder County

The Boulder County Planning Board on March 15 voted to extinguish an agricultural conservation easement along Airport Road near the Diagonal Highway to facilitate a denselypacked, 400-unit residential development called “Somerset Village.”

In terminating this 40-yearold easement on “nationally significant agricultural land,” these five Planning Board members ignored the unanimous opposition of the public commenters.

Boulder County staff highlighted compensation to be paid by the developer into the county’s open space fund.

The funding of future open space purchases should not come at the expense of the Kanemoto neighbors, who have for four decades reasonably expected that a conservation easement found in the Boulder County land records would mean what it says: that it “shall prohibit the Grantor, his successors and assigns, from erecting or constructing any residential structures.”

Conservation easements should be held in trust for the public and extinguished only when their purpose becomes impossible to fulfill. By treating them like baseball cards to essentially be traded for a developer’s payment, the Planning Board gave notice to every county resident, wherever they may dwell, that a conservation easement in this county cannot be relied on.

Termination of the Kanemoto Estates’ conservation easement will next be considered by Boulder County’s three commissioners. If you care about the open space easements that dot our county, urge them to stand up to development pressures and maintain this 40-year-old agricultural conservation easement near the Diagonal Highway.

— Randall Weiner, Boulder