On
Tuesday, March 20, the El Paso City Council approved a plan which called for
preservation, in perpetuity, of the 837-acre Scenic Corridor land just west of
the Franklin Mountains State Park. The motion, made by Representative Niland
and seconded by Representative Robinson, amended the Public Service Board’s
Westside Master Plan and specifically mentioned “authorization to process a
Conservation Easement by a third [party]” for the Scenic Corridor. The previous
month this plan had been approved by the City’s Open Space Advisory Board. On
Wednesday, June 13, the Public Service Board itself unanimously approved this
resolution, made by Mayor Cook: “To approve the [Technical Working Group’s]
recommendations that if the [Scenic Corridor] reverts to the City [after having
been transferred to the Franklin Mountains State Park], it will come back with conservation
easement if that is legally possible.”
A
conservation easement is simply a legal contract. It binds the parties to honoring
the contract’s terms in perpetuity—forever. The terms of a conservation
easement are negotiated by the land’s current owner, the land’s new owner if
any, and a third party—typically a land trust organization. (The world’s
largest land trust is the Nature Conservancy, preserving land through easement
or ownership in over 30 countries and all 50 states.) The third party monitors
the easement while the land’s owner manages it. If the Scenic Corridor is
transferred to the Franklin Mountains State Park (a frequently-mentioned possibility),
the park would manage the land and a land trust (yet to be named) would monitor
it, making sure that the terms of the easement were honored.
It’s
indeed possible for a land trust to hold a conservation easement on land that
is owned by the City of El Paso or by the State of Texas. At the present time,
El Paso’s Frontera Land Alliance holds the easement on the 26-acre Thunder
Canyon on the upper West Side, owned by the City through 2037 as a Public
Improvement District. At present, at least five Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department (TPWD) properties carry easements in full or in part, including the
Black Gap Wildlife Management Area near Alpine and the famous Government Canyon
State Natural Area to the west of San Antonio. But it’s also true that state-
and city-park land can be disposed of. From 1995 through now, TPWD disposed of
57 parcels previously forming part of Texas state parks. Seventeen were sold,
fifteen were transferred, eight were exchanged and so forth. In El Paso itself,
parts of the Mission Valley’s Blackie Chesher Park were disposed from parkland
use so that a police station and a municipal court building could be built on
them.
A very important reason why an easement must be deployed on the Scenic Corridor can be summed up thus: “frontage roads.”
A
very important reason why an easement must be deployed on the Scenic Corridor
can be summed up thus: “frontage roads.” According to TxDOT’s plans for Loop
375, frontage roads will run about 300 yards to the east of the Paseo del Norte
interchange, on Scenic Corridor land. Frontage roads provide access to stores,
restaurants and other commerce. The temptation—15, 30, 45 years from now—to
sell off part or all of the 837 acres will remain strong. But with a
conservation easement, the 837 acres will be preserved in perpetuity, just as
City Council and the Public Service Board want them to be.
I
strongly urge that when it meets next Tuesday, the El Paso City Council renew
its commitment to a conservation easement on the Scenic Corridor land by voting
in favor of one.
Dr. Richard Teschner
No comments:
Post a Comment