01/05/2004
Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

By STACY SHELTON/Staff

Carol Hassell's green quest started about seven years ago, when developers decided to plop down a mega-mall two miles upstream from her Gwinnett County home.

She worried about what the 450-acre moonscape of red clay, followed by a massive parking lot, would do to the creek alongside her house. Hassell, who had grown concerned about the rampant clear-cutting as Gwinnett grew, imagined periodic floods of red water, then an exodus of fish and other stream creatures.

But a career in public relations had taught Hassell diplomacy. Instead of picketing zoning meetings, she joined in negotiations with Mall of Georgia developers. In the end, 88 acres was protected as green space along Ivy Creek. The developers marketed the preserve as an attraction for weary shoppers.

It was a big deal in 1997: creating a nature preserve on mall-front property. Today, while not commonplace, it's certainly more expected.

Subdivision builders market their pocket parks and brag about the trees they didn't cut down. Philanthropists donate land and money. Counties and cities commit sales and property taxes to amass green space.

"People want that quality of life," said Hassell, who left her corporate job two years ago to become executive director of the Georgia Environmental Council, an information exchange for environmental groups.

In 2001, Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, tried to bring consistency to the state's green space movement. Under the Georgia Heritage Trust Act of 1975, governors have protected natural places in spurts --- from Ossabaw Island in 1978 to the Hardman Farm along the upper Chattahoochee River in 2002.

Barnes sought to give local governments some control over preservation and promised to commit $30 million a year to help densely populated counties save green space. Over two years, $60 million went to 54 counties. State records indicate $25 million of that was spent to save 4,074 acres. The rest has been distributed but counties have not yet accounted for it.

State help withdrawn

In 2003, newly elected Gov. Sonny Perdue pushed the Legislature to cut funding for green space as it tried to balance the state budget. Perdue, a Republican and an outdoorsman from Middle Georgia, wants local governments and the private sector to take a bigger role in land preservation.

The governor is proposing what he calls the Georgia Land Conservation Partnership, which would bring together all the green space players, from cities to individual donors. Such an effort already is taking place on a smaller scale, with the Chattahoochee River Land Protection Campaign, launched in 1999 by environmentalists, businesses and government leaders to create a 180-mile linear park along the river.

Any day, Perdue will name an advisory panel on land conservation in Georgia to bring green space efforts under one umbrella.

In the meantime, without state help, private green space efforts eclipsed public ones in Georgia last year, following a 25-year national trend, said Hans Neuhauser, executive director of the Georgia Environmental Policy Institute in Athens, a private nonprofit that acts as a service center for land trusts.

Private land trusts, which hold land in a permanent, undeveloped state, have proliferated in Georgia. Trusts can own entire tracts or just own development rights, which prevents new building. Landowners who put property in a trust often get a tax break. Neuhauser said there were no land trusts in the state in 1980.

"Now, in 2003, I know of 57 land trusts in Georgia," Neuhauser said.

Hassell was one of the land trust pioneers. In 1998, she helped found the Gwinnett Open Land Trust, the county's first green space conservation organization. At first, she said, "The community didn't understand what we were talking about."

Five years later the group has assembled more than 460 acres of green space worth $11 million. Among donors are a woman who died without heirs, leaving 50 acres and her house to the trust, and a developer who marketed the county's first subdivision that offers communal green space.

Philanthropists step in

Long before land trusts, wealthy Georgians were conserving green space. Coca-Cola magnate Robert W. Woodruff was one of the first. He donated $4 million to help the state buy the barrier island Ossabaw. After his death in 1985, Woodruff's foundation turned his 29,000-acre quail hunting preserve into an outdoor ecological laboratory.

Now there's Home Depot co-founder Arthur M. Blank, whose family foundation has spent $11 million since 2002 to help community groups and local governments set aside 640 acres inside the I-285 Perimeter.

Some money went toward preserving the 31-acre Wildwood Forest in the Morningside-Lenox Park neighborhoods of Atlanta, the city's last significant old-growth forest, and the 136-acre Intrenchment Creek Park in DeKalb County.

Elise Eplan, vice president of the Blank foundation, said the Blanks "feel very strongly that everybody should have access to beautiful and useful and green parks."

Still, most of the state's conserved land --- 68 percent --- is controlled by the federal government, said Liz Kramer, a landscape ecologist at the University of Georgia who is cataloging the state's critical wildlife habitats. Only about 6 percent is in private hands.

Local governments, particularly in metro Atlanta, have also taken on a larger role in the green space movement, responding to citizens' desire for green relief amid strip malls, boxy retail stores and half-acre subdivision lots. Fueled with Barnes' green space money, cities and counties passed a wave of tax initiatives to leverage their dollars.

Hassell was also in on that movement. She led the 2000 Gwinnett sales tax campaign, which now is raising at least $92 million for green space. The next year, she won a seat on the Suwanee City Council while city voters were approving a 145 percent property tax hike to buy park land and green space. Suwanee bought an 85-acre tract for a park along Suwanee Creek. Across from City Hall, at the busy intersection of Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road and Buford Highway, a 10-acre park opened last month where a drugstore or service station could have gone.

Cherokee County passed a sales tax hike in 2000 and is setting aside $5 million for green space acquisition. The next year, DeKalb County voters agreed to borrow $125 million to buy park land.

Yet Georgia is far from meeting a widely recognized goal of preserving 20 percent of the state in its natural form. The unofficial goal gained ground when Barnes introduced his green space program. Neuhauser and others estimate the state is less than halfway there.

According to the Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation organization with an Atlanta office, Georgia lags behind South Carolina, Tennessee and North Carolina in green space protection. Florida, a national leader, has set aside about 23 percent of its land. The Sunshine State is spending $300 million a year raised in part through taxes on real estate sales and the timber and mining industries.

Georgia doesn't impose such taxes or fees on companies that remove the state's natural resources, such as timber, titanium and kaolin, a clay used in porcelain production.

Clay Long of the Atlanta law firm McKenna, Long & Aldridge, who was appointed by Barnes to chair the state's Green Space Commission, which stopped meeting last year when the money ran out, said he believes Georgia should dedicate $100 million a year to conserving land.

"This ought to become so important that there's money dedicated to it, just like there is for police and health and safety and everything else," Long said.

Panel to coordinate

The governor's soon-to-be-appointed advisory panel is expected to identify possible sources of permanent funds, such as new taxes or fees. It could bring back the idea of a tax on real estate sales, which Perdue backed when he was a Democratic state senator.

The panel also will be charged with developing the state's first land conservation plan, including prioritizing potential land deals where important historical and environmental features can be preserved. Unlike Barnes' Green Space Commission, there won't be much state money to give away --- at least in the beginning. And what money there is will be used differently.

In the state's first attempt at institutionalizing green space efforts, state dollars filtered through the 54 fastest-growing counties.

Jeanie Thomas, Perdue's policy adviser, said the state is likely to keep tighter control over its money and that every county, no matter how rural, will have a fair shot at winning grants. So will land trusts and other private groups that work to preserve land. And the state could offer assistance without dollars. In-house experts, mostly in the Department of Natural Resources, know how to negotiate land deals, how to properly maintain natural landscapes, and how to identify critical habitats for rare and endangered plants and animals.

"There are ways to leverage resources to get a bigger bang for your buck," Thomas said.

Graphic Name: Met-green space.fh8.eps1357621
Graphic Type: Map
Caption: GREEN SPACE
The dots represent metro Atlanta land protected from development. Parks are not included. Land is owned by federal, state or county governments or private land trusts.
Source: Georgia Natural Heritage Program
/ CHUCK BLEVINS / Staff

Graphic Name: GA-Chattgreen space12081357623
Graphic Type: Graphic
Caption: CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER GREENWAY CORRIDOR
Since 1997, public and private groups have protected land valued at $140 million along the Chattahoochee River. The greenway is 12,900 acres stretching 72 miles. Key acquisitions are noted.

The map pinpoints the following sites:


Ga. Dept. of Natural Resources
New state park: 542 acres
Amount: $7,200,000
Source: State of Georgia

Ga. Dept. of Natural Resources
New state park: 48 acres
Amount: $1,500,000
Source: State of Georgia

National Park Service
New federal park: 900 acres
Amount: $25,000,000
Sources: Federal/Private

Local Government (City of Roswell)
New county park: 438 acres
Amount: $5,175,000
Sources: State of Ga./City of Roswell

Local government (Douglas County)
New county park: 493 acres
Amount: $2,400,000
Source: Douglas County

Ga. Dept. of Natural Resources
New state park: 2,924 acres
Amount: $6,700,000
Sources: State of Georgia/Private

Map includes: Lake, pond, reservoir or river, county limits; Management agencies: Multiple agencies, U.S. Forest Service, Army Corp. of Engineers, Ga. Department of Natural Resources, Local Governments, Private Conservation Easement Holders, Potential Acquisitions

Inset map of Georgia indicates area of detail relative to Atlanta.

Sources: Chattahoochee River Land Protection Campaign, Trust for Public Land
/ ROB SMOAK / Staff
Graphic Name:
Graphic Type: Graphic
Caption: GEORGIA'S CONSERVATORS
About 8 percent of Georgia's land is conserved, not all of it permanently. The land is generally left in a natural state or developed with trails instead of ball fields. Here's a breakdown of who controls the conserved land.

U.S. Forest Service: 30 percent
Georgia Department of Natural Resources: 25 percent
U.S. Department of Defense (military bases): 17 percent
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: 17 percent
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (around lakes): 4 percent Georgia Board of Regents: 1 percent
The Nature Conservancy: 1 percent
Robert W. Woodruff Foundation: 1 percent
New York Zoological Society: 1 percent
Other (private trusts, cities and counties): 3 percent

Source: University of Georgia's Institute of Ecology

(c)2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and any copyright holder identified in the material's copyright notice, is prohibited.