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Monday, June 17, 2013

NorCo Among Top 5 Counties in 2013 Farmland Preservation

According to the latest newsletter of the Northampton County Conservation District, Northampton County has set aside nearly five times the amount that Lehigh County will spend on farmland preservation this year. But don't get the idea Lehigh Country doesn't care about farmland preservation. Thanks to former Commissioner Sterling Raber, it has preserved 251 Lehigh County farms covering a total of 20,692 acres. That's more that twice the 124 farms preserved in Northampton County, consisting of 12,412 acres.

In 2013, 20 of 33 applying farms are qualified for preservation. The total fund available is $3,339,024. This includes a county commitment of $1,025,405, a township contribution of $200,000, and state funding of $2,113,619.

Northampton County ranked 5th in terms of county commitments, behind Chester, Lancaster, Bucks and Berks Counties.

The other 52 participating counties committed $350,000 or less to their farmland preservation programs for this year.

Lehigh County has committed approximately $220,000.

Pennsylvania is the nation's nation’s leading farmland preservation program. Over 25 years, the state has preserved 4,385 farms totaling 470,000 acres with $1.1 billion dollars..
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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 17, 2013 at 8:42 AM

    There is no better advocate for preservation than Sterling. He is the farmer's farmer!

    Lehigh is at the point where land is getting hard to get. The county has had a very aggressive acquisition program in recent years.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJune 17, 2013 at 12:26 PM

    What is the status of Lehigh County's Green Future fund? Are they doing away with it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 17, 2013 at 12:41 PM

    Farmland should only be preserved if it is to be returned to forest land, it's original condition before being clear cut.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJune 17, 2013 at 1:27 PM

    12:41 makes a valid point.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Peter J. CochranJune 20, 2013 at 5:04 AM

    Yesterday ,we saw the signs at indicated farm preservation .Now ,I don't disagree with helping a farm ,a farmer or support of our agrarian society from people like ABE that just push development.QUESTION, then do tax payers have recreational rights to the track of protected ground-of coarse less crop damages?

    ReplyDelete

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