By Steve Kline, ESLC President and CEO 

The past few weeks have found conservationists looking south to Virginia for the latest news in an ongoing, and critically important, debate over a single development project with wide implications across the mid-Atlantic landscape. 

The details: a landowner in Virginia’s King George County owns a 1400-acre parcel and is seeking the necessary approvals to build a commercial-scale solar installation on about 200 acres. The solar development in question boasts a flashy website and a slick presentation about all the great benefits the project will impart.

There is a problem, however: the area slated for solar development is protected by a permanent open space easement, voluntarily put into place in 2001, funded by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and held, in perpetuity, by Virginia’s Department of Conservation and Recreation.

The easement makes no allowances for commercial solar. As one might expect, the state agency holding the open space easement has said, in writing, that the solar installation is inconsistent with the easement. The King George County Planning Commission also decided, in a 4-1 vote earlier this year, to recommend that the board of supervisors deny the application, further demonstrating the project’s inconsistency with the county’s comprehensive plan, which strongly emphasizes natural resource conservation and rural character preservation.

Despite this, the solar project has lurched forward toward approval, illustrating that conservation easements are only as strong as our willingness to enforce them. We can assume that other easement landowners, in Virginia and elsewhere, are watching what happens here, to see what’s next. A lukewarm approach to enforcement, one that allows this project to advance to grading and silt fences, and heavy equipment, would set a deeply worrisome precedent on every acre of conserved land in Virginia. If solar can proceed on these protected acres, why not other protected acres? And if solar, why not data centers? Transmission lines? Where would it end?

Some decision makers here in Maryland, in the rush to build renewable energy, have suggested conservation easement lands as a potential siting solution. In response, the entirety of the Maryland land trust community has stood firm to protect the sanctity of our perpetual conservation work. We can argue day and night about where solar belongs, but it does not belong on conservation easements.

Clearly, no land trust, conservation agency, or landowner wants to wind up in court. But easements, at their very core, are legal instruments. While the courtroom represents a last resort, avoided whenever possible, it is still an altogether appropriate setting to defend conservation. To avoid this adversarial outcome, ESLC prioritizes active stewardship, visiting each of our more than 334 easements at least once every year to identify any potential concerns early and work together with our landowner partners to resolve issues before they become violations. This thoroughly pragmatic approach has worked for the last 35 years.

But at the end of the day, ESLC is both preventive and responsive. We are in the business of defending conservation: upholding the protected natural resources of the Eastern Shore of Maryland for current and future generations and defending the sanctity of conservation easements everywhere in the bargain. In our view, Virginia has the same responsibility on 200 acres in King George County—to provide a robust defense of the natural resources it saw fit to protect two decades ago.