PEC working to preserve Madison County

For years, I’ve actively supported the Piedmont Environmental Council — giving it spare money, attending annual meetings, and, most recently, staffing the PEC hospitality tent this past Election Day. I loved sharing home-baked cookies, local apples and cider with fellow Madisonians after they voted. I especially loved hearing about hopes and fears for our future, and that inspired my main message here: PEC is here to help address our concerns, but as a 501C3, nonprofit, membership-based organization, PEC very much needs our tax-deductible support. Even a small contribution will help.

Although PEC is based in Warrenton, it provides land conservation officers to many northern Piedmont counties, including Madison, free of charge, as one of its many efforts to help us be informed and think through ways to promote and protect our rural economy, natural resources, history and beauty.

PEC-generated maps of land use in Madison show that agriculture is still a way of life here (of course!). Maps are useful, though, for they can and do show the concentration of productive parcels of land that has been whittled away by various forms of non-agricultural development scattered throughout our county. Madison is still a pretty place that attracts many visitors, but the fractured way we have allowed non-agricultural development threatens tourism because it threatens productive farming and forestry.

Our local economy is strengthened and our way of life sustained by farming, forestry and tourism, as recognized in the county’s five-year comprehensive plan and documented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the loss of any one of these components will eventually bring down all three.

As PEC has recognized, farmers must be able to operate profitably or fail due to increasing input costs while land prices rise due to residential use pressures. Timber income is affected by the long distances raw lumber must be transported to the mill. Tourist/recreational uses decline as we lose tended farms and permit scattershot housing developments because people see no reason to travel to a place that looks like every other.

What do we need to do?

Keep the Money at Home: PEC has funded a “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” marketing campaign that supports local farms and farm markets, including in Madison. The concept is simple: Be aware of where the products you buy come from and who pockets the money when you make a purchase. By supporting local production and sale of food and value-added farm and wood products as well as local services, your dollars go back to the community and move through it, instead of going to someone far away.

Create a Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) Ordinance: Madison will have a public hearing soon on a PDR ordinance, supported by PEC, which would serve to protect land voluntarily placed into conservation easement by families farming land. The supervisors are currently reviewing such an ordinance, as called for by the comprehensive plan. Such an ordinance would let the county identify farms and forests it would like to see protected, qualify for state matching funds, and accept applications from family farms interested in selling their development rights.

Storm Water Ordinance: PEC stands behind consideration of such an ordinance because when sediment laden runoff enters our streams and rivers, it carries with it nutrients and bacteria that adversely affect the health of our streams and individual water supplies. One impact example: Madison has excellent trout fishing streams, but they are threatened by increasing levels of pollutants. A storm water ordinance would increase use of low impact principles and best management practices by new commercial and residential development projects.

Wireless Communications Ordinance: Such an ordinance would regulate how cell phone towers are put on our landscape. Of course we want cell phone service, but do we have to destroy our beautiful view shed with 200-foot towers to get it? PEC and others have shown there is another option — shorter towers placed sensitively that provide needed service but also income — more tax income to the county and lease payments to our residents.

Broadband Infrastructure Study: PEC recognizes that increased broadband services could dramatically increase our economic development and prevent the need for environmentally unfriendly infrastructure, such as sprawling strip development. Other rural communities have realized the benefit of such services to improve delivery of health care services, learning opportunities, and participation in community events, as well as new work and job-related opportunities.

Conclusion: Madisonians can choose their future, and PEC is trying to help. Please consider joining those of us who support PEC in its efforts to inform and assist us. The issues we face that PEC can help us with are of critical importance to our work, our families, and the future of our home, God’s country. We can work together to preserve our way of life. PEC can and will continue to help us, with our help.

(Guest columnist Kit Johnston is a free-lance writer and editor as well as owner of La Bella Terra, an historic farmhouse bed and breakfast inn in Novum. Contact her via e-mail at JhnstnKt@aol.com. For information on the Piedmont Environmental Council and its activities in Madison County, call the PEC’s Wolftown-based Beth Pastore at [540] 948-3854.)