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Financing local land
and water protection
Many communities struggle
with natural resources protection: how do we weigh and
address the costs and benefits of protection versus
restoration?
While there is a great
deal of sophistication in terms of environmental
planning for communities, knowing how to pay for
resource protection is significantly less sophisticated.
To meet this challenge,
the University of Maryland’s Environmental Finance
Center (EFC) and Evergreen Capital Advisors (ECA) are
working with the Shenandoah Resource Conservation and
Development (RC&D) Council and the Valley Conservation
Council (VCC) to gather stakeholders across the
Shenandoah and James river watersheds of Virginia to
identify reasonable protection goals, set local
strategies, and put in place structures for long term
financing of Shenandoah Valley environmental protection
initiatives.
This project, funded by
the Virginia Environmental Endowment, kicked off with a
series of “Leadership Dialogues” in which the project
team met with representatives from all cities and
counties in the Shenandoah RC&D region to find out key
natural resources concerns and goals. As a result of
those dialogues, three financing charrettes were held on
key topics identified by localities: land protection,
stormwater management, and greenways.
The final phase of this
project will be one-on-one work with communities who
want to implement demonstration projects and programs,
such as financing a local Purchase of Development Rights
program or greenway.
There will a series of
three charrettes dealing with conservation issues in the
Shenandoah Valley.
Charrette 1 - Financing
Rural Land Protection
Charrette 2 - Financing
Stormwater Protection
Charrette 3 - Financing
Greenways
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