The DeHart Reservoir.
Capital Region Water, the city’s water and sewer authority, is contemplating a $1 million sale of land above the DeHart Reservoir, the lake that supplies Harrisburg’s drinking water, authority officials said Monday.
The sale would occur under a conservation partnership that will generate revenue while keeping the property in public hands, said Capital Region Water CEO Shannon Williams.
The sale, to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, would be federally funded through the Department of Defense’s Army Compatible Use Buffer program, or ACUB, which seeks to maintain undeveloped spaces around military installations.
The program would partner Fort Indiantown Gap, a National Guard training facility near the reservoir, with the Conservation Fund, a national environmental charity.
“The military are not good neighbors,” said David Weisnicht, deputy base operations manager at the Gap. “We make a lot of noise, we make smoke, we fly things.”
A sale under the ACUB program would guarantee the base could continue its operations without being encroached upon by future developers, Weisnicht said.
If the sale were to go forward, the Conservation Fund would purchase the 384-acre parcel with ACUB funding and then transfer the property to the Game Commission.
The parcel, at the furthest upstream edge of Capital Region Water’s 8,200 acres in Clarks Valley, would form a bridge between two existing tracts of state gaming lands on either side of the reservoir.
The deal’s structure would provide “one of the best guarantees of protection in perpetuity,” said Kyle Shenk, the Conservation Fund’s Pennsylvania representative.
Ownership by a government entity, as opposed to a private developer, would provide continuity, Shenk said. And the deed would contain language compelling the Game Commission to prevent incompatible development in the future.
Clarks Valley, along the Kittatinny Ridge, forms part of a critical migration corridor for raptors and other birds, Shenk said.
He said the sale would allow Capital Region Water to monetize its land assets without endangering the ecosystem or the pristine watershed.
A map of Capital Region Water land around the DeHart, with the parcel proposed to be sold at upper right, in purple. Courtesy of Capital Region Water.
Williams, in an interview about the proposed sale last week, said her “gut feeling” was that the deal represented a window of opportunity to ensure preservation while generating much-needed revenues for the authority’s capital projects.
Among those projects are comprehensive evaluations of the transmission mains that bring water to the city from the DeHart and from the Susquehanna River, as well as an assessment of the condition of authority pipes throughout the water system.
The authority will have a projected $5 million in capital expenses on the water system each year for the foreseeable future, with no current funding strategy in place for such projects beginning in 2016, according to Williams.
If the board passed on the current proposal, Williams said, she feared a similar opportunity would not come along again any time soon. And a future authority, under different leadership and facing new financial obligations, might consider an agreement without preservation guarantees.
At the same time, Williams said she wanted to ensure members of the public had adequate time to consider the decision and offer their input at hearings.
“I want devil’s advocates all over the place,” she said.
The proposed sale will appear before the Capital Region Water board at their regular meeting at 6 p.m. this Wednesday, on the first floor of 212 Locust St., Harrisburg.
Wednesday’s meeting is not the first time the sale comes before the board. In July, the board unanimously authorized the negotiation of a preliminary sale agreement.
If the board votes Wednesday to consider the sale, the authority will commission an engineering report and will schedule public hearings before a final vote in February.
