Grass- Roots Conservation

It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to see that the beauty of the town received no detriment.

--Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau's vision is alive and well in seven Northeastern states, where 581 municipalities have started "conservation commissions" that are fast becoming the most effective new arm of local government. Each commission has five to nine members, usually plain citizens appointed by the town. Charged with managing local natural resources, they try to accommodate competing needs, such as developing industry and saving wetlands. At a time of rapid, sloppy urbanization, the new commissions have found ways to strike a balance between progress and preservation. On their record so far, their efforts merit study throughout the U.S.

To See a Tree. The idea began eleven years ago in Ipswich, Mass., when residents set out to save a marsh from a drain-and-fill project. In seeking legal authority, they discovered a local ordinance empowering Ipswich to acquire land for uses that might enhance the community, and then drafted a bill allowing any town in Massachusetts to protect its natural resources. In 1957, the state legislature passed the law, and 285 Massachusetts towns have since created conservation commissions. Both the state and federal governments have also put up matching funds that help the commissions buy land for public use. One result: all of the spectacular estuarine marshes from the New Hampshire border to Gloucester have been saved.

"The movement is strongest in the highly populated industrial areas," says Lawyer George R. Sprague, 31, director of the state's conservation service. "People there are desperate to preserve green areas so they don't have to drive all the way to the Berkshire hills to look at a tree. There is absolutely no doubt that the commissions are the galvanizing force behind most environmental legislation here." Pushed by the commissions, for example, Massachusetts recently enacted a law that permits a landowner to keep his property while selling the development rights to a town, city or charitable organization, thus permanently protecting the area as open space. It is the slickest--and cheapest --scheme for land-banking since former Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall encouraged the idea of buying the rights to a property's scenery.

Yankee Bargain. In 1960, the movement began to cross Massachusetts' borders, helped immeasurably by an implicit appeal to regional traditions. For one, the basic unit of government in New England is the town, and commissions fit easily into the scheme of town meetings. For another, given state and federal matching funds, the local governments were able to buy open land by putting up as little as 25% of the money. No Yankee could resist such a bargain.

After Massachusetts, Connecticut has had the best experience with conservation commissions. Working with schools, the commissions have helped to create educational parks. Building public support, they have pressed laws through the state legislature giving tax breaks to farmers and other landowners who want to keep their lands open. Says Gay Ewing, president of the Connecticut Association of Conservation Commissions: "Faced with an environment that's going downhill, people get discouraged about their power to change things. But with a commission on the scene, people begin to feel that they can start to do something,"

Some Trouble. The key to success, as a forthcoming study by the Conservation Foundation in Washington, D.C. makes plain, is support from the state. New York's 20 commissions have done little, mainly because Albany has not decided how much legal power, if any, they should have. New Hampshire's 85 conservation commissions are severely hampered by lack of matching grants from the statehouse in Concord, And Rhode Island's 27 have been almost totally neglected by Providence.

Rhode Island also made a tactical mistake in limiting many commissions to "genuine conservationists," taken from the rolls of old conservation groups.

They turned out to be well-intentioned but poorly informed people who could not solve real problems. Another kind of trouble has arisen in Maine, where down-Easters resent being told what to do with their land. Many have stubbornly refused to pay any attention to their conservation commissions.

Once the conservation commissions are accepted, however, they boom. That commissions work outside New England is proved by the example of New Jersey, the nation's most heavily industrialized state, which has started no fewer than 55 of them in less than a year. The commissions in several coastal towns are acting to protect the state's water basins, shoreline and lands below the high-tide mark. The town of Harding is considering a novel "stream-protection zoning" statute that would thwart pollution and overdevelopment along its many small streams. In short, the commissions are uniting local officials and environmentalists for action where it counts--at the grassroots level where decisions are made.

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