PennDOT Plan Will Eliminate Farmland

In 1989, Chester County voters overwhelmingly approved a $50 million bond issue to buy development rights, save farmland and stop sprawl. Between October 1989 and January 2002 over 15,000 acres of prime Chester County farmland were preserved through the Chester County Agricultural Land Preservation Program. The combined County and State financial commitment to the Agricultural Land Preservation Program during this time period was over $58,000,000.

Through the Agricultural Land Preservation Program, landowners make a long-term commitment to agriculture and receive financial compensation in exchange for relinquishing the development rights on their private farms. The commitment to preserve Chester County farmland is executed through the State Department of Agriculture, Office of Farmland Preservation and Chester County Agricultural Land Preservation Board.

Over 50% of the land in the State/County Agricultural Easement Program lies within townships bordering the Route 41 corridor in the western part of Chester County. The townships include East Fallowfield, East Marlborough, Highland, London Grove, Lower Oxford, New Garden, New London, Newlin, Sadsbury, Upper Oxford, West Caln, West Fallowfield and West Marlborough. All or a portion of these townships lie within a 6.5 mile radius of Route 41. Within this same area, over 670 farmers have dedicated over 51,000 acres of land to agriculture through the Agricultural Security Area Program.

In addition to the above taxpayer financed programs, private individuals have placed conservation easements worth tens of millions of dollars on tens of thousands more acres, permanently preserving them.

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture boasts that "We're Number One" on its Farmland Preservation Home page. Here, the Department itemizes the various programs it oversee that "help slow the loss of prime farmland to nonagricultural uses" and "strengthen and protect our quality farmland from urbanization in rural areas."

Farmland preservation has and will continue to be a popular and important public policy, supported overwhelmingly by voters and elected officials. PennDOT's plan effectively nullifies these efforts.

PennDOT's initial plan is to build a new four-lane highway from the Delaware line to Route 926 at a cost of more than $25,000,000 per mile. The new road will cut a 120 foot swath of steel and concrete through the last remaining expanse of contiguous farmland in the Delaware Valley. Much of the farmland that would be condemned by PennDOT is protected by public and private conservation easements that have been painstakingly assembled over many years privately by the Brandywine Conservancy and by the County's Agricultural Land Preservation Board using tax dollars.

PennDOT's new highway will largely cancel out these efforts. For one thing, PennDOT will seize hundreds of acres that have been purportedly preserved forever as farmland by taxpayers and private individuals. Secondly, the construction of the new highway guarantees residential and commercial development on all the remaining acres not preserved. [See the excellent, 8-part series published the week of May 13, 2002 by the Daily Local News regarding what happened along Route 100 after it was expanded and the Route 30 bypass constructed]

The few farms that might remain as agricultural islands will not thrive. It takes a critical mass of agricultural businesses to make a farm community prosper - farmers need feed stores, equipment sales and repair, veterinarians, access to buyers and markets, farm supply stores, and other farmers like them.

The many mushroom farmers in the area depend on the many horse farms in the area for a steady supply of straw and manure for composting to grow mushrooms. Where will they go when most of the horse farms disappear?