A record 6,100-plus acres of land in Massachusetts - nearly equal to the area of Wellesley - have been preserved from development this year through conservation restrictions, thanks to a sweetened federal tax break that expires in 18 days. A total of 182 Bay State property owners - including homeowners, farmers, and businesses - have executed legal agreements with local governments and land trusts giving up their right to develop land totaling more than 6,116 acres, Ian A. Bowles, the state Energy and Environmental Affairs secretary, said yesterday.
That is nearly double the amount of land protected in 2005 or 2006, and the highest total since the state began the program in 1967, Bowles said. Newly protected parcels include 30 acres around the Stony Brook alewife run in Brewster, a 28-acre area covering 8,000 feet of Buzzards Bay shoreline in Bourne, 300 acres on Nantucket, 600 acres surrounding one of the last undeveloped ponds in the Berkshires, and even a 1-acre lot with grape arbors on Roxbury's Fort Hill. Donors still own the land but give up the right to develop it, reducing the market value and tax obligation.
Bowles and environmental groups said the main factor was a tax break for land donors that Congress and President Bush substantially enhanced in August 2006, but which expires Dec. 31. Under the old rules, donors could use the value of the development rights they forfeited to offset 30 percent of their adjusted gross income each year for five years. The temporary enhancement allows land donors to offset up to 50 percent of their taxable income for 15 years, or 100 percent for some full-time farmers and foresters. This means that a landowner making $100,000 a year could receive a total offset of $750,000, compared with $150,000 under the previous provision.
"This tax incentive has worked," said Mark H. Robinson, executive director of the Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts, a Barnstable association of 24 town land trusts and watershed-protection associations. "It's stimulated a lot of people who've been fence-sitters."
William E. Rose, 73, of Phillipston, which is in northern Worcester County, said the enhanced tax break was a key reason for the timing of his decision in June to place a conservation restriction on 103 acres next to his family's Red Apple Farm. Rose's grandfather bought it in 1929, and now his son Albert offers pick-your-own apples, pears, peaches, berries, pumpkins, a small petting zoo, and wagon rides.
"It was nice to take advantage of the extra 20 percent, and I wanted to protect the land from development," Rose said. "I'm sure my grandfather and father would love it. It will never have houses."
Dr. Eric White, 66, a Williamstown surgeon whose family lived for five generations in Winchendon, last May put a conservation restriction on 90 acres of farmland his late stepmother owned and leased to the adjacent Murdock Dairy Farm. White said he was committed to preserving a bucolic vista his ancestors had maintained since 1891. "The family legacy is important," White said. Congress is weighing an extension of the conservation tax break as part of a wide-ranging farm bill, but Robinson said activists don't know whether it will pass.
Source: Boston.com