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(Continued from Page 1) and the Agricultural and Forestal District program. “That’s a significant block . . . half again as big as Shenandoah National Park.”
The Piedmont reserve “is not a dreamy sort of idea,” he continued. “It would be a real geographic entity recognized by the state with delineated borders . . . Signs could be posted, announcing ‘You are entering the Piedmont Reserve’.”
In explaining the need for this new approach, he maintained that today’s tools for controlling development and protecting resources are “pretty flimsy” to combat increasing growth pressures. Loudoun County’s population is projected to swell by 132 percent by the year 2010; Albemarle’s population will double by 2030; this year, Culpeper’s rate of housing starts is up 269 percent over last year, the PEC board chairman noted. And the state’s “extraordinary drive for increased highway construction” — including the proposed outer beltway through Loudoun, Fauquier and Prince William, the Piedmont thoroughfare to parallel Route 29 and Charlottesville’s outer beltway — will bring even greater pressure to bear, he added.
To deal with this, localities can zone for preservation but “what can be zoned can be unzoned . . . Zoning is a short term solution to land use problems,” Mr. Whitehouse said. Agricultural and Forestal Districts commit land to open space, farming and forestry for eight years, but what happens when that time period expires? he asked. “We could have a dandy set of villages all across the land.”
PEC supports the granting of conservation easements as a more permanent solution, but until recently, problems with the Internal Revenue Service cast a cloud over the tax benefits of this program, Mr. Whitehouse noted. And the new tax laws which go into effect Jan. 1 will lessen the economic benefits which accrue to a landowner who grants a permanent easement to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, Mr. Whitehouse acknowledged.
To questions, he explained that the reserve would be divided into service districts, in accord with the land use plans of local governments, where growth would be “directed and encouraged.”
“Local governments would be asked to identify the areas that they want to keep in rural use” and then a combined state, regional and local effort — involving government and the private sector — “would figure out a way to make that happen,” added
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