Are conservation easements truly permanent? Maybe not.

Density – overcrowding – has been a Loudoun problem for years. Some while back, voters rose up and tossed out the entire Board of Supervisors. That brought some help, but not for long. Since then, residential areas in eastern Loudoun have pretty much been built out. 

The Transition Policy Area was to be an area between the suburban east and the rural west. Now much of it is being been lost to new subdivisions. Its days are numbered.  

Intense residential development is rampant in western Loudoun. For years we complained against density, with cluster subdivisions as the poster child of bad ideas. We lost battle after battle, while the pro-growth crowd always yammered, “Don’t mess with zoning. What you really want are conservation easements, they’re permanent.”

Or are they?

Land speculator Chuck Kuhn bought property on Airmont Road, placed it in a conservation easement and turned it into a community farm, using volunteer labor to grow vegetables that were given to the needy. That was certainly laudable.

But skunks can’t change their white stripes and apparently land barons will eventually pursue profits instead of produce. That’s happening now as Kuhn wants to put an events center (a party barn) on that easement property—the community farm. He is pushing the Land Trust of Viginia, which holds the easement deed, to allow him to build that thing. Doing so seems to require LTV to modify the deed or to stretch its interpretation of the many use and development restrictions imposed by the deed of easement.

LTV is a great organization but it is still pondering the plunderer’s demand. Why? “No,” is a complete paragraph. Or perhaps Kuhn is threatening litigation. Who knows?

Things may even get worse. Kuhn’s newest stratagem is some sort of elaborate recreation center. Who knows what that might be. But be sure, he will demand special treatment to modify the conservation easement deed, get new zoning or whatever it takes.

All of this casts a pall over the entire concept of “permanent” conservation easements. The ball is in LTV’s court.

Charlie Houston

Paeonian Springs