Acres Of Land

Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan unveiled last week to more clearly delineate and quantify the reasoning behind state land purchases is a sensible approach. Certainly, Program Open Space has proved its worth over the years. By setting aside a portion of real estate transfer taxes for land conservation, the state has been able to buy tens of thousands of acres of land for public use - and to prevent private misuse. But as the recent brouhaha over Open Space purchases on Kent Island has demonstrated, such decisions can easily become controversial.

Ginette Mathiot,91, the best-selling French author of millions of cookbooks sold worldwide, died Sunday in Paris.Her "Je Sais Cuisiner," (I know how to cook) was a bible for generations of French homemakers preparing everything from lobster bisque to crepe suzette.First published in 1932, it sold more than 5 million copies, translated into English, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Serbo-Croatian and Japanese.Bernardo Yorba,77, a descendant of an 18th-century Spanish soldier who was awarded tens of thousands of acres of land in what is now Orange County, died Saturday in Los Angeles.

Land baron: Besides being a master deal maker and cable news pioneer, Ted Turner is the nation's biggest landowner, according to Worth magazine. In its February issue, Worth reports that Turner owns 1.3 million acres of land in six states: New Mexico, Montana, Nebraska, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The magazine says Turner's holdings include eight ranches, three plantations and an island.Look again: Accountants Ernst & Young reminds taxpayers about some easily overlooked deductions: Did your house sustain damage from last winter's bad storms?

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - People from the mountains of Appalachia have many a tale to tell about coal and timber companies that bought up their land, ripped out the minerals or cut down the trees and shipped most of the profits out of state.But some residents are writing a new ending to those stories as their communities find a way to protect their small corners of the world. While few individuals have the money or resources to take on giant, multinational companies, nonprofit community groups are buying parcels of land to form land trusts.

Almost 2,500 acres on 52 sites in Baltimore County could be covered by the state's proposed "brownfields" legislation, which would clear the way for redevelopment on polluted properties.But the list of properties identified as possible sites -- which includes parts of Martin State Airport, Dundalk Marine Terminal and land along Back River -- is still preliminary and may not be made final for more than a year, said Robert L. Hannon, county director of economic development."They have the potential to be hazardous waste sites," Hannon said.

Anne Arundel County has purchased almost 60 acres of land in Shady Side with plans to turn it into a large recreational park within the next several years, county officials announced yesterday.The county bought 57.68 acres on the northeast tip of the Shady Side peninsula from the estate of F. C. Smith, a south county farmer and former owner of the Shady Side Market, for a little more than $1 million, Joe Cannon, director of recreation and parks, said yesterday.The land -- to be named Jack Creek Park -- is bordered by Jack Creek to the north, Chesapeake Bay to the east, Snug Harbor to the south and Idlewilde Road to the west.

The Church of the Open Door and Westminster Nurseries Inc. withdrew a request to create a business-zoned area on 15.5 acres north and east of Weis Market hours before a scheduled public hearing on the request yesterday.The two petitioners took a request for business zoning on a much smaller piece of land to public hearing before the Westminster planning commission last night. The Carroll County planning commission joined the hearing because part of the property lies outside city limits.Westminster Nurseries owns the approximately 100 acres of land between Gorsuch Road and commercial properties fronting on Route 140. The Church of the Open Door, an independent, nondenominational church, has a contract to buy the land.

Several years ago I indulged myself in an ecology class at a local community college. As part of the course we took a field trip to a self-sustaining, environmentally friendly ''homestead.'' To fans of a kinder and gentler relationship with the natural world, it was a wondrous place.In this day and age it is nearly impossible to live completely independently of your fellow humans, but these folks had used their three acres to come as close as most of us could stand. The garden produced vegetables, the chickens donated eggs and the goats threw in milk and lawn maintenance.

Under the Department of Natural Resources' Cooperative Wildlife Management Area Program, county hunters have nearly 3,000 acres of land available to them. Most of it is privately owned and offers decent hunting prospects for all varieties of small and upland game, plus deer.The properties include Saw Mill, near Union Mills, and the Speigel property nearby. Saw Mill offers 500 acres to a maximum of 10 hunters daily while Speigel's 250 acres can be enjoyed by eight hunters at a time. Both properties may be hunted Monday, Wednesday and Friday throughout the hunting seasons.

REPAIRING the divide between white America and black America must begin with reparations for slavery. This country has never fully accepted moral responsibility for either its role in slavery or the devastating effects of slavery on African Americans. At the heart of the crises afflicting black America today is not welfare, drugs or single mothers but the failure of America to consciously heal the wounds of slavery.Reparations -- compensation for physical, cultural and economic damage -- are well established in international law. Germany was forced to pay reparations to the Jews for the Nazi Holocaust.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has announced approval of conservation easements that will preserve a 70-acre property in the county. The Board of Public Works approved four easements statewide, totaling 460 acres, including Anne Arundel County's South Rural Legacy Area. The Anne Arundel easement, which preserves 24 acres of woodland and 40 acres of cropland near the border of Calvert County, will be held by the county. The South County property is part of a farmland base that produces corn and soybeans.

Funds for park, recreation projects approved The Maryland Board of Public Works last week approved $5.76 million in Program Open Space funding for eight park and recreation projects in Anne Arundel County. Total funding of $5,768,954 was awarded for these projects: * $692,000 for stadium renovations at Chesapeake High School. * $470,000 to acquire 4.5 acres of land surrounded by the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary, and $1,827,000 to buy 140 acres of land adjacent to the sanctuary. * $1,264,000 to purchase 66 acres of forested riparian land near the headwaters of the South River.

GRASONVILLE -- The lands that once belonged to Arthur Kudner Jr. spread across Queen Anne's County like a lush carpet. From the main road, the forest appears to have no end, and acres of soybean fields hug the shimmering blue of Prospect Bay. Even on the rural Eastern Shore, this much land - more than 1,500 acres - is hard to find, and harder still to keep pristine. So when the estate went up for sale, nearly every land trust in the state took notice. But none could afford to buy it. Then David Sutherland made a $20 million gamble.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan unveiled last week to more clearly delineate and quantify the reasoning behind state land purchases is a sensible approach. Certainly, Program Open Space has proved its worth over the years. By setting aside a portion of real estate transfer taxes for land conservation, the state has been able to buy tens of thousands of acres of land for public use - and to prevent private misuse. But as the recent brouhaha over Open Space purchases on Kent Island has demonstrated, such decisions can easily become controversial.

RICHARD H. GOODWIN, 96 Nature Conservancy president Richard H. Goodwin, a botanist who as national president of the Nature Conservancy in the late 1950s and mid-1960s helped preserve thousands of acres of open space on both coasts, including 1,100 acres around the farm where he lived in East Haddam, Conn., died July 6 in East Lyme, Conn. The death was confirmed by his son, Richard Goodwin Jr. Dr. Goodwin, the Katharine Blunt professor emeritus of botany at Connecticut College in New London, was president of the Nature Conservancy from 1956 to 1958 and again from 1964 to 1966.

Cambridge -- The Ehrlich administration announced yesterday that it plans to spend $10.4 million to preserve about two-thirds of a contested development site near the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. The effort to save 754 acres of Eastern Shore farmland marks a change in direction for the administration, which previously declined to get involved in what it called a mostly local land-use decision. The purchase agreement will still allow developer Duane Zentgraf to build more than 600 homes, marketed to senior citizens, on 326 acres of farmland on the southern fringe of this city.

The Ehrlich administration is paying $6.5 million to buy more than 500 acres on the Eastern Shore so the land can be preserved as open space. But county officials say the property is largely wetlands that could not have been developed in the first place - and local developers say it is worth only a fraction of what the state is paying. According to Worcester County records, about 70 percent of the 572-acre tract along Assawoman Bay at the Delaware line is marsh that could not be developed under state law. The rest of the land, known as the Weidman Farm, is cropland and woodland that is so remote it has no access to county water and sewer service.

On the campaign trail, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. boasts that he has preserved more than 60,000 acres of land since taking office almost four years ago. "One in five acres in Maryland today is in permanent easement protection -- that's a big deal," he said last week. What he doesn't say is that his administration has preserved a fraction as much land as former Gov. Parris N. Glendening, who made land conservation a signature policy. Maryland protected 220,000 acres from development under Glendening in the four years before Ehrlich became governor, and more than 80,000 acres during the Democrat's first term, according to state agencies.

When conservationists talk about "saving" this and "protecting" that, logical questions might be: Saving it from whom? Protecting it from whom? And why should the government force what you want on someone else - who obviously wants something different, or there would not be an issue in the first place? After all, the Constitution says that all citizens are entitled to the "equal protection of the laws." Such questions almost never get asked. Nor do evidence or logic play much of a role in most conservation issues.

RINGGOLD, Texas -- Two days after a fierce brushfire swept through this rural cattle town, cinders still smoldered in the ruins yesterday. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke and everywhere there were mangled metal, ash heaps and ugly swaths of black, charred earth. "It came up on us so fast there was nothing to do but get out of the way and watch the town burn," said Kent Hanson, 49, who lost 300 acres of land in the blaze. Here in Ringgold and elsewhere across Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, frequent high winds and a lingering drought have turned bone-dry communities into giant tinderboxes.