Save the farms
Washington County voters can
stem the loss of farmland by saying
yes to a PDR plan; it would be
a model for Ozaukee County
By Ozaukee Press
February 21, 2007
Ozaukee County voters won’t have any say in Washington County’s farmland preservation referendum on April 3, of course, but we should all be rooting for a yes vote.
Anyone who has experienced the beauty of the rolling farmland of the Kettle Moraine can understand that the benefits of protecting such land from development in Washington County don’t stop at the county line.
That’s one reason to hope the voters of Washington County approve the preservation program. Another is that a successful farmland preservation initiative based on purchase of development rights (PDR) with public money would serve as a model for Ozaukee County.
Just as in Washington County, Ozaukee land is being converted from agricultural use to sites for residential and commercial developments at a rate that portends a disappearing countryside with attendant environmental and aesthetic losses.
The Town of Grafton, whose rural character is being claimed by development at a furious pace, recently said goodbye to its last dairy farm. Less than 50 years ago there were 60 farms in the township.
The Washington County referendum will ask voters whether the county should spend $800,000 a year to pay owners not to sell agricultural land for development.
The decision should be easy. The county is flush with cash from its sales tax—some $8 million a year. Most of the needs meant to be funded by the tax have been met. Investing some of the revenue in land preservation would be sound policy. Failing to do it would deprive future generations of the natural assets county residents now enjoy.
Yet the concept of paying for development rights can be a stumbling block. Under the plan proposed for Washington County, as in PDR programs that have protected hundreds of thousands of acres across the country, owners who want to participate and whose land is deemed suitable would be the paid the difference between the value as agricultural land and as developed land. The land would continue to be farmed.
As was evident in the debate preceding the Town of Grafton’s failed PDR referendum in 2004, some see the process as enriching landowners at the public’s expense.
That’s the pinched view. The broader, clearer view is that without such a program farmland will be sold for development at a pace that will increase in direct proportion to the increase in the price of land.
There are good reasons to adopt policies to limit farmland losses.
We need farming. In Ozaukee County, for example, farms generate $300 million in economic activity and provide more than 2,400 jobs. While farmland is not taxed as heavily as developed land, farms, unlike residential subdivisions, require few publicly funded services.
Developed land saps the environment; open land refreshes it. Water runs off of developed land; water on farmland is absorbed in aquifers, replenishing groundwater supplies. Overdeveloped counties are running out of water.
Maintaining farming is one of the most effective ways to save open spaces. The open spaces of farms consist of more than fields for crops. Farms typically include many acres of untillable land covered with the trees, prairie plants and waterways that can make up valuable natural areas.
Beyond the environment and the economy, farmland is an essential ingredient of that intangible quality called rural character that adds so much to the appeal of living in Washington and Ozaukee counties. The term has something to do with pastoral images of barns and livestock in the countryside, but what it really means is having the space to let nature live and breathe free of the clutter of excessive development.
For all of those reasons, our neighbors in Washington should vote yes. And then Ozaukee County should proceed with its own farmland preservation program.