Lower Macungie Delays Vote on Leister Farm

By Randy Kraft, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Sep. 7–Facing a large and hostile crowd, the Lower Macungie supervisors Thursday night delayed voting to lift an agricultural conservation easement on the Leister Farm.

Instead, they gave the Wildlands Conservancy 60 days to come up with an alternative site of similar size that the township could use for youth recreation.

Earlier, the Pennsylvania Agriculture Department backed the conservancy’s effort to keep the easement on the farm.

In a letter Wednesday to Supervisor Chairman Kenneth DeAngelis, Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff said his department "supports the conservancy’s attempt to protect this farm for future generations."

The township wants to lift the easement through a condemnation proceeding so at least part of the farm can be used for youth recreation.

"It is our hope the township will respect the wishes of the conservancy and reconsider this condemnation," Wolff wrote. "We have serious concern over the precedence the proposed condemnation of the [Leister] Farm will set and what implications this may have for farmland preservation efforts across the state."

Lower Macungie acquired the farm in 2005, paying previous owner David Jaindl $700,000. The township wanted it to provide more recreational space for athletic programs of the Lower Macungie Youth Association, even though the conservancy holds an easement on the property preserving it in perpetuity only for agriculture.

The township plans to remove that easement through an eminent domain proceeding. It would pay the conservancy several hundred thousand dollars for the easement.

On Thursday, the supervisors were set to consider adopting a resolution formally authorizing the township solicitor to file a declaration of taking in Lehigh County Court to remove the easement.

The conservancy objects to Lower Macungie’s plan, arguing it has an ethical obligation as a land trust to preserve the farm for agriculture.

The township unsuccessfully had attempted to get the conservancy to amend the easement to allow recreation as well as farming on the land. But the conservancy intends to "work to protect the conservation purposes of the original donation."

Children of the late Mary Leister, who owned the farm when she donated the agricultural easement to the conservancy in 1996, support its effort to maintain the easement.

Wolff wrote that the 104-acre farm has some of the most productive prime farmland soils found anywhere.

The secretary said "easements in their entirety" that are held by state and county farmland preservation programs "have never been removed through eminent domain."

Contacted late Thursday afternoon, DeAngelis said he did not know about the letter from Wolff. When told its contents, he responded: "I’m not prepared to make a comment on that."

Noting the letter was sent Wednesday, Supervisor Dennis Hinkel said he had not seen it so he could not respond to it.

Both Hinkel and DeAngelis voted in favor of the condemnation Aug. 16. Marilyn Jones, the third supervisor, voted against it.

A number of objectors hoping to change their minds were expected at that meeting.

"We are trying to rally the troops to make it very clear to the Lower Macungie supervisors that what they are planning to do is unacceptable," wrote Jeff Zehr, Lehigh County’s farmland preservation director. "Lower Macungie has allowed some of the best farmland in Pennsylvania to be lost forever. They must be stopped."

In a letter Thursday to the supervisors, Barbara Benson, conservation chairwoman of the Lehigh Valley Group of the Sierra Club, wrote: "To the best of our knowledge, no conservation easement has ever been condemned in its entirety in Pennsylvania. The Lehigh Valley should not be the first place for that to happen.

"If Lower Macungie is successful in undoing this conservation easement," she said, "it would create a very damaging precedent for both private nonprofit land trust protected properties and for conservation easement preserved properties acquired by local, county and commonwealth governments."

randy.kraft@mcall.com

610-820-6557

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