Cascade Land Conservancy Unveils 100 Year Preservation Plan
$7 billion plan would preserve 1.3 million acres in 4 counties
Two years ago, a handful of people sat around a table brainstorming ways to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Olmsted plan that gave Seattle its most beloved parks.
Former Mayor Charles Royer remembers marveling at the people who stared out over the mudflats and imagined a beautiful city with lush, green refuges and tree-lined boulevards.
The group decided the best way to honor that far-reaching vision was to emulate it — by figuring out how to conserve enough land to protect the region’s quality of life as its population swells over the next century.
Today, the Cascade Land Conservancy will unveil a sweeping plan to protect nearly 1.3 million acres of forests, farms and parkland in a four-county region, largely through market incentives, such as compensating landowners for not building homes.
But to accommodate population growth — which the land trust estimates could double to 7 million by 2100 — cities must become dense, vibrant places that draw people like a magnet.
The plan also suggests starting a broad, regionwide conversation about better ways to develop rural land, where tensions between property rights and preservation have become toxic of late.
“This really was a celebration of taking the long view, which doesn’t really happen in America anymore,” said Royer, who said people here are still enjoying the legacy of the Olmsteds, the landscape architects who helped remake the city a century ago.
“Corporate America plans for its new quarterly reports, government plans as far as the next election — so it was a real thrill to sit down with a bunch of smart people … and elevate the conversation to a higher level.”
The land conservancy developed its “Cascade Agenda” over the last year with the help of civic leaders, tribes, developers, economists, scientists, environmentalists and thousands of citizens. They were asked how they wanted the region to look 100 years from now.
The strategy aims to maintain roughly a million acres as private working forests and farmland in King, Kittitas, Pierce and Snohomish counties. About 265,000 acres of streambanks, shorelines, old-growth forests, prairies and recreational parks would be bought outright.
Though accomplishing those goals over the next 30 years is expected to cost $7 billion in today’s dollars, the group maintains that much can happen without significantly adjusting current government spending on land acquisition.
“What we’re trying to do here is use the marketplace to achieve our goals, so … landowners are compensated for the level of conservation that we as a community want,” said Cascade Land Conservancy President Gene Duvernoy.
The agenda proposes to improve and expand programs that allow builders looking to put more homes on an urban piece of land to buy extra “development rights” from farmers or rural landowners who agree to keep their land as is.
Developers or transportation agencies that destroy wetlands are currently required to create them somewhere else. But the plan suggests focusing instead on protecting existing swaths of wildlife habitat and stream corridors.
Continue reading this story from the Seattle P-I:
$7 billion plan would preserve 1.3 million acres in 4 counties