The Durability of Conservation Easements in Georgia
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Durability of Conservation Easements in Georgia Meghan Ryan & Michelle Godfrey November 3, 2008 The UGA Land Use Clinic provides innovative legal tools and strategies to help preserve land, water and sce- nic beauty while promoting creation of communities responsive to human and environmental needs. The clinic helps local governments, state agencies, landowners, and non-profit organizations to develop quality land use and growth management policies and practices. The clinic also gives UGA law students an opportunity to de- velop practical skills and provides them with knowledge of land use law and policy. For more information about the UGA Land Use Clinic contact: Jamie Baker Roskie, Managing Attorney UGA Land Use Clinic 110 Riverbend Road, Room 101 Athens, GA 30602-1510 (706) 583-0373 • Fax (706) 583-0612 [email protected] a way as to render the original terms of the conservation The Durability of easement impracticable or its initial purpose unfeasible. A general disdain for “dead hand” control also exists in Conservation Easements in the law and in public policy.7 Courts have expressed Georgia “a concern about permitting past generations to control current property owners” and “some discomfort with perpetually imposing the past’s vision on the lives of Meghan Ryan & Michelle Godfrey 8 Fall 2008 the future.” Recent litigation before the Supreme Court of Wyoming I. Introduction demonstrates some of the ambiguities and concerns surrounding the durability of conservation easements.9 Conservation easements, generally defined as In 999, Fred and Linda Dowd knowingly purchased a “nonpossessory interest[s] in land that impose use parcel of land subject to a conservation easement and restrictions on...landowner[s] in order to achieve a soon sought to have the easement terminated.0 The conservation purpose,” have proliferated over the last couple argued that the discovery and development of few decades as tools to accomplish the goals of land coalbed methane beneath their property by a company preservation. Protected acreage has risen from 28,000 owning mineral interests underlying the land was in 980 to just over 5 million in 2003.2 This drastic “inconsistent with the terms of the conservation increase has been encouraged in part by the passage, easement.”11 The conservation easement in question in most states, of conservation easement enabling here provides that the Dowds’ land can only be used legislation, a reaction to the 98 publication of the for agriculture.2 Now that drilling rigs have made Uniform Conservation Easement Act (UCEA) by the their way onto the property, Fred Dowd contends, National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform the land is worthless for agricultural purposes, and, State laws.3 Prior to the widespread enactment of such therefore, lacking in value unless the conservation enabling statutes, conservation easements were entirely easement is extinguished in response to the “unforeseen creatures of the common law, and the UCEA was drafted circumstances” of this mineral discovery.3 The Board of largely in response to the lack of protection afforded County Commissioners of Johnson County agreed with conservation easements by the common law. the Dowds; it extinguished the conservation easement over the Dowds’ ranch in 2002. Litigation was then Even with the validation provided by enabling statutes, initiated by Robert Hicks, a resident of Johnson County however, conservation easements remain a relatively and owner of the local newspaper. new and untested legal device. The majority of these easements are drafted in perpetuity, meant to encumber The Wyoming Supreme Court dismissed this case for the land they protect forever.5 The possibility of lack of standing without addressing the merits of Hicks’s such permanent restrictions on real property has claim.5 Even though this case has not yet provided caused some concern and confusion: legal scholars have noted “considerable confusion and uncertainty 7 regarding whether, when, and how ostensibly See Gerald Korngold, Solving the Contentious Issues of Private Conservation: Promoting Flexibility for the Future and Engaging ‘perpetual’ conservation easements may be modified or the Public Land Use Process, 2007 Utah L. Rev. 039 (2007). terminated....” should future conditions change in such 8 Id. at 052. 9 See Hicks v. Dowd, 57 P.3d 9 (Wyo. 2007). 1 Jeffrey Tapick, Note, Threats to the Continued Existence of 10 See David Baron, In Land Conservation, ‘Forever’ May Not Conservation Easements, 27 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 257, 259 (2002). Last, NPR, available at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story. 2 Nancy A. McLaughlin, Conservation Easements: Perpetuity php?storyID=8802882 (last visited September , 2008). and Beyond, 3 Ecology L.Q. 73 (2007). 11 Id. 57 P.3d at 9-7. 3 Tapick, supra note , at 272. 12 Id. 4 Id. 13 Baron, supra note 0. 5 McLaughlin, supra note 2, at 75. 14 Id. 57 P.3d at 97. 6 McLaughlin, supra note 2, at 25. 15 Id. 57 P.3d at 98. The Durability of Conservation Easements in Georgia 1 any further clarification on the subject, it has raised in duration unless the instrument creating it provides an important question about the use of conservation otherwise.”20 In other words, the default arrangement easements. Following its initial dismissal by the is for conservation easements to last forever; in order Wyoming court, the Attorney General of Wyoming has for the duration to be otherwise, the parties involved taken up the case, so it remains likely that Hicks v. must expressly allow for this in creating the easement. Dowd will eventually have broad implications on the field of conservation easements. The remainder of This default provision fits within a broader policy this memorandum will address these concerns about favoring perpetual conservation easements in the conservation easements in the context of Georgia’s state of Georgia. The Georgia Land Conservation laws. Act, which provides funding to cities or counties that enact conservation easements, requires that the land conserved be a “permanently protected land....”2 in II. Conservation Easement order to receive funds. Further, in enacting the Georgia Land Conservation Tax Credit, Governor Sonny Perdue Termination in Georgia expressed his intent behind the credit: to incentivize individual landowners “to donate perpetual conservation A. Introduction to the Georgia Uniform easements.”22 In fact, the very passage of the GUCEA Conservation Easement Act demonstrates the desire for legal legitimatization and In Georgia, the General Assembly first recognized protection of permanent conservation easements, as conservation easements by statute in 995, through it was passed partly in response to the problems in passage of the Georgia Uniform Conservation Easement recognizing conservation easements at the common Act (GUCEA).7 This statute, closely modeled after the law.23 Even though the GUCEA alludes to termination UCEA, begins by defining a conservation easement as: and modification and goes so far as to state that no provision of the statute should “affect the power of a a nonpossessory interest of a holder in real court to modify or terminate a conservation easement in property imposing limitations or affirmative accordance with the principles of law and equity,”2 the obligations, the purposes of which include law of conservation easements must be studied against retaining or protecting natural, scenic, or open-space values of real property; assuring this backdrop of a policy strongly favoring permanence its availability for agricultural, forest, over conservation easements of a fixed duration. recreational, or open-space use; protecting natural resources; maintaining or enhancing air B. Methods of Conservation Easement or water quality; or preserving the historical, Termination in Georgia architectural, archeological, or cultural aspects An initial reading of the GUCEA reveals little about 8 of real property. how a conservation easement might be modified or terminated, except that it can be done according to the The statute delineates terms for the creation and principles governing easements generally or according alteration of a conservation easement: “[A] conservation to the “principles of law and equity.”25 Under Georgia easement may be created…released, modified, statute, ordinary easements can be terminated by either terminated, or otherwise altered or affected in the same 9 manner as other easements….” Though this provision 20 O.C.G.A. §-0-3(c) (2008). of the Act allows for the modification and termination 21 O.C.G.A. §2-A-2(5) (2008) (emphasis added). of conservation easements, the statute expresses a 22 “Governor Perdue Signs Land Conservation Tax Credit preference for preservation easements that cannot be and Litter Prevention Legislation into Law at Earth Day terminated: “[A] conservation easement is unlimited Breakfast,” available at http://gov.georgia.gov/00/press/de- tail/0,28,780079_93832,00.html (last visited October , 2008). 16 Baron, supra note 9. 23 See Tapick, supra note (explaining reasons for passage of 17 O.C.G.A. §-0- et. seq. (2008). the UCEA and the state acts that followed). 18 O.C.G.A. §-0-2() (2008). 24 O.C.G.A. §-0-(c) (2008). 19 O.C.G.A. §-0-3(a) (2008). 25 Id. 2 The Durability of Conservation Easements in Georgia of two methods: abandonment or forfeiture.2 As the express purpose of forcing certain nonuse of land discussed below, the common law in Georgia provides – has fallen into sufficient nonuse or been adequately for several other means of terminating traditional abandoned to call for its extinguishment. Nonetheless, easements. at least one state has expressly allowed for termination of conservation easements by abandonment.3 1. Statutory Methods of Termination The Georgia statute addressing the termination of Even if this statute were to apply to conservation traditional easements dictates that an easement “may easements in Georgia, however, courts here have be lost by abandonment or forfeited by nonuse if the consistently construed the statutory language to require abandonment or nonuse continues for a term sufficient a high threshold for the showing of nonuse or of to raise the presumption of release or abandonment.”27 abandonment of any easement.