By Mitch Meador

The Lawton Constitution

An update on the Fort Sill Private Lands Initiative was presented in the Cache City Council chambers Monday at the invitation of Cache city employee Eddie Dabney.

Land Legacy, a land trust based in Tulsa, is working with area landowners to secure conservation easements on undeveloped property that adjoins Fort Sill's west and east ranges. Steve Bonner, a community planner with the National Park Service, describes conservation easements as a tool for landowners to sell the development right on their property to some other entity, usually a conservation association, while retaining ownership of the undeveloped land itself.

The purpose is to help Fort Sill keep its mission viable while practicing good land conservation and hopefully preserving the land's economic value, Bonner explained.

To implement the project, Land Legacy secured a little over $1 million last year and $800,000 this year from the Farmland/Ranchland Protection Programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture administered by the Nation Resources Conservation SErvice (NRCS), according to Mark Sontag, project manager for Land Legacy. Not all of that money comes down to this part of the state, however.

Sontag's job is talking to area landowners about the project and getting them signed up to participate. He said Monday that the first piece of property for which he got an option agreement signed consisted of approximately 300 acres inside the Cache city limits.

That was in 2003. This year, he obtained a second option agreement on a property just outside the Cache city limits and is talking to two property owners on the western edge of Lawton. One has 300 acres outside the city limits, and the other has 100 acres inside the City of Lawton, Sontag said.

Sontag was here Monday and today visiting with landowners. He said the ones he has met realize the need for a buffer zone around Fort Sill, but each one has a slightly different philosophy as to how to structure his or her property. The contracts vary with the individual landowner, but they all have to meet the federal guidelines, though there is room for negotiation.

Sontag said the USDA has a residual clause where up to 2 percent of the property can be used for something other than agricultural purposes -- say, a house, or barn, or parking area for equipment.

Commercial development is not allowed where USDA is the funding source. However, it might be possible under Department of Defense funding, Bonner and Sontag said.

The defense appropriations bill recently passed by Congress contained $5 million to institute this program on a broader base nationwide, Bonner said. The topic will be item No. 1 on the agenda of a Department of Defense meeting coming up in Savannah, Ga., and Bonner hopes to find out then how the money will be distributed.

Bonner said the City of Lawton-Fort Sill got $25,000 from the Governor's Commission to use for "due diligence"-type work such as appraisals and surveys. It's possible there could be more forthcoming or the Defense Department later this year.

Fort Sill Engineer Dennis Hergenrether said the Fort Sill cooperative agreement has been signed by both Fort Sill and Land Legacy and sent to Fort Sill's higher headquarters at the Southwest Region Office (SWRO) in San Antonio, Texas. SWRO has had the paperwork for several months, and is coordinating with Fort Sill's former higher headquarters, TRADOC, before the agreement goes to the Department of the Army.

Hergenrether said there are six priority areas arond Fort Sill, with the undeveloped land on the south side of the west range being No. 1 because it is the area where there is the most pressure. The east side of the east range and west side of the west range are also hight on the list.

Col. Keith Herring, Fort Sill garrison commander, showed why it is important to preserve what training area Fort Sill has now when he said the installation is 27 miles from east to west, which allows for multiple kinds of training, but from north to south is only six miles across.

"It is nowhere near the size of Fort Hood or Fort Bliss, (both in Texas)," Herring noted. "We have 98,000 acres of training area here at Fort Sill, and other are far, far larger."