Georgetown, Del., May 2, 2006: Sussex County Council has taken a major step in land preservation, teaming with the state of Delaware and a local land trust by committing $650,000 to buy easements for 500 acres of farmland that will remain for generations to come.

County Council, at its Tuesday, May 2, 2006, meeting, gave its blessing to use $300,000 in agriculture preservation money in its fiscal 2006 budget, plus another $350,000 set aside for the Sussex County Land Trust, as its contribution toward a plan to protect six parcels of farmland scattered throughout the county.

The $650,000 from Sussex County, combined with another $350,000 in private donations raised by the Sussex County Land Trust, will create a pot of $1 million. That money, in turn, will be matched by $1 million in funding from the state’s Agricultural Lands Preservation Program, plus another $1 million in matching federal funds for farmland preservation.

“Essentially, we’re ending up with $3 million that is going to protect these 500 acres of farmland,” said Dennis Forney, secretary of the Land Trust, a private group of concerned residents and business people committed to preserving and acquiring open space. “… Our mission is to preserve open space, and this does that.”

The six parcels, totaling just under 500 acres, are all working farms in the Seaford, Bridgeville and Milton areas. The owners of those properties are not selling their lands, just the right to subdivide and develop the parcels in the future, said Michael McGrath, chief of planning for the Delaware Department of Agriculture. The net effect of purchasing “easements” – instead of buying the land outright -- will keep the properties as farmland and open space in perpetuity.

Wendy O. Baker, president and chief executive officer of the Sussex County Land Trust, said the six properties were selected because they met certain criteria for preservation. Most notably, they are contiguous to other protected parcels, and the purchase of these easements will help the Land Trust in its mission to help create a Grand Wildlife Corridor.

That corridor is a loop of preserved farms, forests and other natural tracts held by a variety of owners that stretches from Slaughter Beach down through the Redden Forrest, over to Trap Pond, east through the Great Cypress Swamp, back up along the Inland Bays and eventually ending in the Primehook Wildlife area outside Milton.

Mr. McGrath, who also spearheads the state’s agricultural preservation program, said the partnership among Sussex County, the state, the federal government and the Land Trust, is “virtually unique in the country,” and it benefits all Sussex Countians.

“We don’t know of another place where it’s been done just this way in the United States,” Mr. McGrath said.

County Council President Lynn J. Rogers said government actions like the council’s Tuesday are what the public demand, and it’s those actions that will have a lasting legacy. “This is what the people we represent want to see,” President Rogers said. “This is a deal that preserves a part of Sussex County for our children, and our children’s children.”