The authority seeks to conserve a pristine 8,200-acre property that includes the reservoir supplying Harrisburg’s drinking water.
Harrisburg’s water and sewer authority announced plans Monday for a $9 million conservation agreement that would permanently restrict development on its 8,200-acre property in Clarks Valley, a pristine, forested watershed in northern Dauphin County that supplies the city’s drinking water.
The agreement would involve a partnership with the Nature Conservancy, the Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation and Fort Indiantown Gap, a National Guard training facility that neighbors the property. The agreement would keep the land in authority hands while restricting how Capital Region Water could use it.
“The DeHart watershed property is critical to protecting our drinking water,” said Capital Region Water CEO Shannon Williams. “Yet there are not protections in place against future development of this land.”
Under the proposal, such protections would be enshrined in a conservation easement, a legally binding agreement that attaches to a property and restricts how it can be used by current and future owners.
The easement would seek to preserve the watershed property “predominantly in its natural, scenic, forested and open space condition,” maintaining water quality and protecting rare plants and animals while preventing further development, according to a summary provided by Capital Region Water.
The property falls within one of the largest road-free areas in the state and forms part of the Kittatinny Ridge migration corridor, said Josh Parrish, director of the Nature Conservancy’s “working woodlands” program.
“For us, it’s a conservation priority,” he said.
The Nature Conservancy, a Virginia-headquartered environmental charity, will be Capital Region Water’s long-term conservation partner under the proposal, monitoring compliance with the restrictions on use of the land.
The project cost will primarily be funded through the Army Compatible Use Buffer program, or ACUB, a federal initiative that seeks to maintain undeveloped zones around military bases.
Fort Indiantown Gap was the country’s busiest National Guard training center last year and is the site of constant aviation, making it incompatible with residential development, according to Lt. Col. Christopher McDevitt, construction and facility management officer for the Pa. National Guard.
“We fly constantly, 7 in the morning til midnight, pretty much every day of the year except Christmas,” McDevitt said. “We’re noisy neighbors sometimes.”
The Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation, a conservation non-profit founded by the former NASCAR driver and 2002 Daytona 500 champion, will work with Fort Indiantown Gap to establish the easement with the federal funds.
The new proposal differs significantly from a prior conservation agreement that the authority’s board rejected in a 3-1 vote in early 2015. That agreement would have involved the $1 million sale of a smaller portion of the property to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which would have submitted to similar land-use restrictions.
The earlier proposal shared the aim of conserving the property in perpetuity, and would have left the door open to expanding the acreage subject to restricted uses.
But the outright sale to the Game Commission, in contrast to the proposed easement, would have meant Capital Region Water retained much less control of the parcel, a prospect opposed by some authority customers.
Through letters and comments at two public hearings, customers told the authority they “did not want to give up ownership of the property to an organization with a statewide constituency,” Williams said.
Williams also said the proposed conservation agreement would provide “much-needed revenue” for the authority, which plans to spend tens of millions in the next few years on upgrading the city’s aging water and sewer infrastructure.
In addition to the $9 million payment for the easement, Capital Region Water could also see future revenues from the property through timber sales and sales of carbon credits.
The authority is working on a 10-year plan to sustainably harvest timber on the property, which the easement will require to be approved by the Nature Conservancy and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, a non-profit Parrish called the “gold standard” in forest management.
Capital Region Water is asking for public comment on the proposal by mail or through its website, capitalregionwater.com, by April 8. It will also host two public meetings on the proposal, on March 23 at 6 p.m. at 212 Locust St. and on March 29 at 6 p.m. at Hamilton Health Center, 110 S. 17th St.
