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The Value of Open Space: How Preserving North Carolina’s Natural Heritage Benefits Our Economy and Quality of Life 6/21/2004 Value_Open_Spaces.pdf

Executive Summary

As the new home of NCPIRG's environmental work, Environment North Carolina can be contacted with any questions regarding this report.

North Carolina’s natural heritage is valuable. Preserving the state’s open spaces can strengthen the foundation for economic growth, enhance quality of life, and protect the health of the environment. For example, open space in North Carolina:

• Attracts tourist dollars. The new Gorges State Park and DuPont State Forest contribute an estimated $47 million each year to the developing tourism economy in Transylvania County.

• Reduces service costs for local governments compared to residential development. Residential development demands public services that cost more than property tax income provides. In Wake County, working farms or undeveloped lands require $0.47 in expenditures for every dollar they bring in revenue. In contrast, residential lands require $1.54 in expenditures for every dollar of revenue. As a result, providing incentives for land conservation can be less costly to taxpayers than development of the same parcel.

• Promotes a clean and plentiful supply of water. Protecting open space buffers around water supplies minimizes water treatment costs, prevents or delays the need to upgrade treatment facilities, and preserves endangered sources of clean drinking water. In 1986, the city of Gastonia, North Carolina found it necessary to switch its water supply from the Catabwa River, polluted by industry and storm-water runoff, to the cleaner water of Mountain Island Lake. Moving the water intake cost $20 million, although this cost was offset by a reduction in water treatment costs in the range of $200,000 per year.

• Protects communities from the costs of flood damage. The town of Kinston in Lenoir County spent about $140 million in federal and state aid to mitigate damage caused by Hurricanes Fran and Floyd. The money paid for the relocation of 1,100 residences and a town sewage plant to safer ground and the purchase of land around the Neuse River floodplain for potential open space and recreational facilities. These costs could have been avoided had the floodplain been preserved as open space from the start.

• Increases the value of nearby properties. Properties close to Hemlock Bluffs State Natural Area in Cary are on average 44% more valuable than those a mile away.

• Provides agricultural products. Family farms like those found in the Sutphin Mill farmland community in Alamance County contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the state economy and create tourist attractions like the Asheville farmers’ market in Buncombe County, visited by over 2 million people in 2002.

• Attracts new employers and residents. Many companies, such as the biotechnology firm Trimeris, highlight the natural environment and recreational opportunities available within the Research Triangle Area when recruiting new employees. Quality of life, defined in part by recreational amenities and open space, is playing an increasingly influential role in where knowledge-based industries decide to locate.

• Reduces air pollution. Forests in Mecklenburg County remove 17.5 million pounds of pollutants from Charlotte’s air every year. Achieving the same emissions reduction with man-made technology would cost $43.8 million per year.

• Provides wildlife habitat. The White Pines Natural Area, a 258 acre preserve in Chatham County, protects a stretch of the Deep and Rocky Rivers that is home to the largest known population in the world of the Cape Fear Shiner, a federally endangered species of fish. Open spaces across the state protect habitat for thousands of different types of plants and animals, including 61 species listed as endangered and threatened across the country.

• Encourages healthy lifestyles. Salem Lake Park encourages a healthy lifestyle for the 95,600 visitors who hike, bike, run, and boat within its boundaries every year, mitigating the negative lifestyle impacts of sprawling development, including obesity and high blood pressure.

• Preserves history. Bentonville Battlefield State Historical Site, just southwest of Smithfield, preserves nearly 600 acres where one of the last major clashes in the Civil War happened in 1865. It is a valuable educational resource for the more than 25,000 people who visit the area every year.

Four years ago, the North Carolina General Assembly pledged to save one million acres of open space by 2010. However, a lack of sufficient funding in open space preservation programs in recent years puts the state’s rich land resources at risk. The state is behind on its progress to save one million acres, having only protected 150,000 acres in the last three years. Meanwhile, the state’s current budget situation is threatening funding. For example, in April 2003, lawmakers cut the original funding of the Clean Water Management Trust Fund by more than 35%. Even at full funding levels, existing land conservation programs are not sufficient to allow North Carolina to reach the million-acre goal. To do so, they will need as much as an additional $1.2 billion over the next seven years, or $176 million each year.

To preserve North Carolina’s open space and fully realize its value, we should:

• Provide full funding for the state’s natural resource trust funds for the upcoming fiscal year, including $100 million for the Clean Water Management Trust Fund and $2.3 million for the farmland preservation trust fund.

• Fund additional open space protection using “certificates of participation.” This financing tool would leverage existing deed stamp tax revenues, which feed the Parks and Recreation and Natural Heritage Trust Funds, to secure additional funds for urgent short-term needs.

• Acquire at least $1 billion to bridge the gap between existing resources and the million-acre preservation goal. Potential funding mechanisms include a bond measure submitted to the voters of the state for approval.