Sapperstein said he was approached by a representative of the Trust for Public Lands, a national nonprofit group that frequently serves as a broker for government in buying land for conservation.
Kent Whitehead, project director for the trust's regional office in Washington, said the group acted on its own, believing the farm to be the largest undeveloped, unprotected waterfront property left in the county. "It's in one of the most populated portions of the state. We saw that as bringing opportunities for public recreation."
But the property received only a "mediocre" rating, in the words of one state official, under an ecological ranking system used by the Department of Natural Resources to determine which sites are most suitable to buy as natural areas.
Meredith Lathbury, chief of land acquisition for DNR said the property scored 69 out of a possible 175 points on the state's rating of its ecological value. As a general rule, she said, properties need to score at least 70 to be considered good candidates for acquisition, but land in a metropolitan area is unlikely to have the rare plants and animals that would boost its score.
"It's shy, there's no doubt about it," Lathbury said.
State officials adopted the ranking system two years ago, in the wake of criticism that they were squandering land preservation funds by buying properties that were unlikely to be developed - or, alternately, already sold for development and therefore commanding much higher sales prices. Officials vowed to focus efforts - and funds - on seeking the most ecologically valuable lands before they were bulldozed.
Earlier this year, the state spent more than $70 million in state and federal funds to buy 9,200 acres on the Eastern Shore and in Southern Maryland. This week, the state Board of Public Works approved spending $1.8 million on 290 acres of forested wetlands along the Pocomoke River in Somerset County. Those tracts rated higher ecologically than the Baltimore County farm, with two of the deals scoring in the low 90s and one as high as 133."In the times we're in right now, we have to prioritize aggressively," Lathbury said. Funds to buy land are "extremely limited," she said, because property tax revenues earmarked for that purpose have dwindled with the slump in the real estate market. The state expects just $13 million in transfer tax revenues this year, she said, and can borrow up to $70 million more for land purchases.
