Prince William County is engaged in revising the sections of the Comprehensive Plan that pertain to the Rural Preservation Study that was created in December 2013. At that time Prince William County Office of Planning held a series of meetings at George Mason University, to discuss the results of the County Planning Department study of the County's rural preservation policies. Dr. Tom Daniels a Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, former farmland preservation program director in Lancaster County, PA was one of the presenters. Dr. Daniels had studied and worked with several communities that had implemented successful and not so successful Rural Preservation Programs.
According to Dr. Daniels, there is in reality a limited tool box for land preservation; most of these tools are based on partitioning land ownership rights. Owning land basically means owning a set of rights- the mineral rights, the use rights, the development rights, the water rights and the air rights. The development rights are controlled by zoning which can be changed by the county supervisors by exception or amendment to the County Comprehensive Plan. Dr. Daniels presentation focused on what tools exist for rural preservation and how likely they are to succeed.
The first land preservation option is essentially for the county or a private party like the Trust for Public Land or another to purchase or receive as a donation of a conservation easement the Development Rights to preserve as open space or farmland in perpetuity. The problem with this option is money. While the Commonwealth of Virginia has a farmland preservation program that provides some funding to counties to purchase the development rights, the funding is extremely limited. There are several federal programs that have funding available to preserve farmland, forestland and ecologically important lands, but these are matching programs and a county must have also have funding and staff expertise available to put together deals and navigate tax deductions and saleable state tax credits and work with other organizations to structure deals and pull together the funding to create a conservation easement or purchase the development rights. This takes a commitment on the part of the County to fund and support such a program.
The second preservation option is to transfer the development rights (TDR) to developments in other parts of the county that allow the developer to build a higher density than normally allowed. This was a strategy that worked incredibly well in Montgomery County where 7,000 TDR deals totaling $110,000,000 were done. Unfortunately, in Virginia the State does not allow the county to operate a “TDR” Bank and Prince William no longer has large development parcels under the current zoning that could purchase a large number of TDRs. The County Board of Supervisors essentially gave away this option. So, it’s too late for the big deals and Prince William County would have to figure out a way to match development rights with small developments. The good news is that the Virginia legislature did pass the enabling legislation for that a few years ago. According to the Lincoln Land Institute TDR programs work only when they are part of a comprehensive plan that has the commitment and political will of the community behind it. TDR programs must be tailored to the specific political, economic and geographic circumstances of their location.
The final land preservation option is to sacrifice areas of the rural crescent and cluster development along the edges with mandatory preservation of some areas of open space within the Rural Crescent. This appears to be the option that will be used in Prince William County. Cluster development is typically part of a low impact development strategy (LID). LID is the latest catch phase in ecologically friendly site development and consists of five elements: preserving open space and minimizing land disturbance; protecting natural drainage ways, soils and sensitive areas; incorporating natural site elements like wetlands, stream corridors, and woodlands as site features; reducing the size of traditional infrastructure; and decentralize and manage storm water at its source. Of the 345 farms in Prince William County (in 2007) 210 of them were 50 acres or less.
LID is by its nature a distributed design involving, ongoing maintenance of the plants, replanting after severe winters or prolonged droughts, weeding, and other land and habitat maintenance along with effective water and sewage management. There is no method of ensuring that these features are maintained appropriately and that any repairs or replacements are done with LID in mind. In addition, there is the problem of supplying water and sewage to clustered developments. Homes clustered together cannot be on well and septic, and it is believed that the county is planning on bringing public water and sewer to these areas. We need to compare the cost of extending and expanding the sewer and water supply and the impact of clustered development on the water resources in the rural crescent and consider if that money could be better spent purchasing development rights. This past winter the Virginia Legislature amended the enabling legislation for comprehensive planning to provide for the continued availability, quality and sustainability of groundwater and surface water resources on a County level as part of the comprehensive plan. Impact on water resources for existing and future users in the rural crescent must be considered and addressed by the comprehensive plan and the County Board of Supervisors.
The Rural Crescent is an extraordinary valuable resource that we need to maintain for our quality of life, the health of our watershed and the ecological services it provides. We need to protect our watershed in order to protect our water supply. If you pave and build over what was open land the groundwater recharge rate will be irreparably damaged. Without water there is no Prince William County. Any changes in the land cover, population density and use of water resources (recall that portions of the public water supply in western Prince William County come from groundwater) must be studied and considered before any changes are made to the land use, zoning and population density within the rural crescent.
Learn more and have your voice heard. On Monday, July 16th 2018 at 7 pm the Prince William Conservation Alliance is facilitating a Community Conversation with Elena Schlossberg of the Coalition to Protect PWC, Gil Trenum a member of the PWC School Board, Martin Jeter of the Mid-County Civic Association, Tim Hugo Delegate for the 40th House District and Kim Hosen as the moderator.
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