peakbagger
In Rembrance , July 2024
Some NH House members are submitting a bill to allow changes to conservation easements. Generally conservation easements are "forever" and means of locking in permanent restrictions put in place on parcels of land. In order for an easement to be continued "forever" it is generally put in a third parties hand to administer and enforce the easements. In many cases, the third party is the state of NH. Many reasons for that but a big one is that if it goes to private organization, like a land trust, there usually has to be block of funds set aside for perpetual administration of the easement. That raises the cost of the transaction. The state on the other hand does not charge to administer. In other cases I think its just required by the source of funding. The problem had been that an easement is only as good as the third party administering it, and in several high profile cases, the state has violated that trust and made changes there were not authorized to do what can and can not be done with these properties. If things get bad enough a third party can haul the state (or any trustee) to court to force the restrictions to be enforced but this is expensive and long drawn out process as the state can assign virtually unlimited resources to delay the case while the party going to court has to pay for these resources. Examples of this are spread all over the state, the state building a communications tower on summit protected by private groups and then assigned to the state, the Ossipee mess where the state sided with the landowner to limit recreational use despite a prior large payment of federal forest legacy funds to the landowner to protect recreational access, violations of the Nash Stream management plan by adding ATV trails, Cannon Mtn arbitrarily deciding long ago that non winter season recreation access on State owned land is not allowed and no doubt others.
In some cases outside groups have forced the state to follow the rules and in others they haven't been successful. At least there was some legal option to contest the violation. This bill provides a huge out to this problem by adding "for any reason that advances the public good" Public good is very nebulous term that can be used politically for numerous changes. It no doubt can be applied to motorized access to areas with non motorized restrictions (like Nash Stream), telecom towers on protected summits, banning trails where its convenient for the landowner despite having sold recreational rights. This bill effectively guts conservation easements by making them vulnerable to future administrations and the bureaucrats in the background. As one of our members commented about pointing out violations of state policy with respect to ATV access, its not popular to go against the policy in a department no matter if he was right.
http://gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/billText.aspx?sy=2021&id=64&txtFormat=pdf&v=current
Nothing in this section shall prohibit a governmental body and
a landowner from changing the terms of an established conservation easement, including
but not limited to exchanging another parcel in return for easing current use restrictions,
if such change is to correct an injustice or for any reason that advances the public good.
In some cases outside groups have forced the state to follow the rules and in others they haven't been successful. At least there was some legal option to contest the violation. This bill provides a huge out to this problem by adding "for any reason that advances the public good" Public good is very nebulous term that can be used politically for numerous changes. It no doubt can be applied to motorized access to areas with non motorized restrictions (like Nash Stream), telecom towers on protected summits, banning trails where its convenient for the landowner despite having sold recreational rights. This bill effectively guts conservation easements by making them vulnerable to future administrations and the bureaucrats in the background. As one of our members commented about pointing out violations of state policy with respect to ATV access, its not popular to go against the policy in a department no matter if he was right.
http://gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/billText.aspx?sy=2021&id=64&txtFormat=pdf&v=current
Nothing in this section shall prohibit a governmental body and
a landowner from changing the terms of an established conservation easement, including
but not limited to exchanging another parcel in return for easing current use restrictions,
if such change is to correct an injustice or for any reason that advances the public good.