A Passion for Forested and Agricultural Land Preservation By Bob Durand - Massachusetts Secretary of the Environment (1999 - 2003)

Mt. Grace Land Conservation Trust Keynote Address:

Bob Durand
MA Secretary of the Environment
(1999 - 2003)

A Passion for Forested and Agricultural

Land Preservation

By Bob Durand, 

Massachusetts Secretary of the Environment (1999 – 2003)

Note: The Keynote Address was delivered on September 17, 2011 at the Mt. Grace Land Conservation Trust* Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting held at the Morgan Memorial Goodwill Fresh Air Camp in Athol, Massachusetts

It’s great to be back at Mt. Grace.  I think it was 10 years ago that I spoke at the 15th annual meeting.  I remember then the passion of your board, it’s board president and executive director for land conservation having had the privilege to work with them my four years as Secretary of Environmental Affairs under Governor Paul Celluci and Governor Jane Swift.  So congratulations on getting to 25 years with 25,000 acres preserved.

Leigh Youngblood,
Mt. Grace Executive Director

Leigh asked me to say a few words about the Tully initiative.  Before I do, I thought by way of background that you should know I have a special affinity to this part of the state - growing up in Hudson, Massachusetts, listening to stories from my father about living in Athol where his parents, my grandparents, worked as many French Canadian Catholics did for the burgeoning shoe industry of the time, and playing along the Millers River.  

It would be years later that many of my hunting and fishing buddies would come out to the North Quabbin to hunt grouse and fly fish for trout, and still years after that I met Senator Bob Wetmore who I sat beside for 9 years in the state senate when we would share stories about the beautiful natural resources in his district.

Senator Robert D. Wetmore (D-Barre) retired,
author of the "Environmental Bill of Rights" Article 97
Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution

So as a newly appointed Secretary of the Environment, when I was invited to the dedication of the Wetmore property round Jacob’s Ridge, I was once again smitten by the seemingly unregimented landscape before me.  It reminded me of places of my youth that have been subsequently fragmented by roads, bridges and developments.  I said to my staff at that time, we need to do everything in our power to protect this valuable resource.  Around this time I had been talking with Keith Ross about the North Quabbin Landscape Partnership, and having made a promise to Secretary Hank Foster and later to David Foster of the Harvard Forest not to forget the forests of Massachusetts as Secretary of the Environment, all of the pieces were coming together. 

Mt. Tully as seen from the 72-acre Gale Farm
preserved by the Mt. Grace Land Conservation Trust

While serving as a state senator and chair of the Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee, it had been on an international trip to Russia where I was introduced to the first bio-reserve.  Everything clicked.  If not in Massachusetts, why not?  Having seen the development sprawl along Interstate 128, Interstate 495,and I-190 near Worcester, I felt we only had a decade to preserve the open spaces and wildlife habitat that are necessary to ensure quality of life that will connect future generations to nature.

So it was in the fall of 2000, I met Leigh Youngblood at Ralph Long’s restaurant in Athol with Chuck Anastas, my chief of staff, and Arthur Bergeron, my under secretary for land protection. I had the power of 5 state agencies and 3500 employees.  Leigh had herself and one staff person.  I told Leigh our predicament, we wanted to protect 200,000 acres of land and create a couple of bio-reserves of 15,000 acres or more around Massachusetts, and we only had a few years to do it.  I asked her if she could spend over a million dollars on protecting 1000 acres of land within the Tully area in a year, and we promised more funding the following year if she could – a lot more funding.  You could see the wheels turning and honestly she said I can try, but I’m going to need more help!

The Tully Valley Forests and Lands Initiative was launched over tuna fish sandwiches and soda.  The primary goal of the Tully Initiative is to expand existing public and private lands protection in order to protect biodiversity while keeping land in private ownership and actively managed for forestry, agriculture, and passive recreation.

Bob Durand

Mount Grace, along with New England Forestry Foundation, the Trustees of the Reservation, North Quabbin Land Trust and Massachusetts Wildlife and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation were about to launch a national model for land conservation, not only in this state but throughout this country.  Building on the vision of the North Quabbin Regional Landscape Partnership and Leigh’s passion for the Tully Valley, my response was not as a cabinet secretary or politician but more as an avid outdoorsman.  I saw an irreplaceable landscape that must be protected for the many different uses this valley supports - one of the largest continuous tracks of forestland in southern New England.  But small patches of development threatened to fragment the valuable block of forests.  The challenge was to defragment a landscape before it was too late.  Knowing that the state is suspect in this part of the state - after all, we flooded 4 towns to create the Quabbin and Shay’s Rebellion started not too far away - we thought our goals would be better met by local people.  So, instead of, “Hi we are from the state and we are here to help,” we went with the local presence – Mt. Grace – a well respected and established land trust with dynamic leadership.

I still have the memo from Bob O’Connor, Kristen Foord, Jack Buckley and Arthur Bergeron with the bullets written on August 2^nd:

Ÿ        Focus on the area inside the Tully trail loop first with personal contact to landowners

Ÿ        Send out letters to owners in the entire four town focus area explaining the value of conservation restrictions on working farms and forests and the need to defragment the landscape

Ÿ        Find a way to support the town assessors to improve their operation

Ÿ        Streamline the state land acquisition process for Tully

Ÿ        Support a landowner collective of Tully conservation restriction owners

And we had the three l’s to get it done….land, land trust and Leigh.

Phase one:  First 3 months, 25 landowners received information packets, telephone calls and personal visits. 5 land protection projects closed.

Phase two:  400 landowners of 20 acres or more contacted. 38 landowners closed.

Phase three:  540 landowners contacted. 61 closings.

We offered free appraisals without their obligation to sign up.  I remember being overwhelmed that 4,200 acres comprised of more than 80 tracks, owned by 43 different landowners in four towns were protected in just a 6 month period.  Who was this woman?  It was her willingness to take a chance, a risk that other larger land trusts wouldn’t have taken.  Along with great partners like NEEF, the National Environmental Education Foundation, the Trustees of the Reservation, and other land trusts, the federal agencies, state and local agencies and their support, on December 3, 2002 on a cold winter day along with Senator Brewer, we dedicated the North Quabbin Bioreserve - the first of two bio-reserves dedicated during my tenure as secretary.  

North Quabbin Biosphere boulder today - Click to enlarge

Dedication Ceremony - December 3, 2002
Environmental Secretary Durand unveils the boulder

After two years, we had protected 9,100 acres and defragmented a landscape which serves as a national model for larger landscape scale land protection.  It has left a lasting legacy in this valley - protecting and enhancing the irreplaceable plant, wildlife and bird species all while creating recreational opportunities that maintain the Tully Valley’s unique rural character for generations to come – and protecting a large landscape using primarily conservation restrictions that allow public access and encourage sound forest management while keeping most of the land in private ownership.

One of the tools used in land protection here in the valley and across the state is the Community Preservation Act, as Jay Rasku knows so well. 

And as many of you know, the state match which was once at 100% has dwindled to around 25 % due to dwindling home sales and registry transactions – a loss of millions of dollars for open space protection and historic preservation.

Chair State Senate Ways and Means
Stephen M. Brewer (D-Barre)

Vice Chair of Ways and Means Steve Kulik, and sponsors Anne Gobi and Senator Stephen Brewer – now the chair of Ways and Means -  have filed a bill called an act to sustain community preservation.  The bill is now in Ways and Means in the House.  I wanted to make you aware that many of our allies were able to attach language to the gambling legislature that passed the House to increase funding of CPA through casino gambling revenues.  Though not enough to get us back to 75%, we are hopeful we can work with the senate next week to fix the discrepancy. We need your support.

Rally at the Statehouse September 27th at 10:00 am.

Finally, the work you do is important as a member of Mount Grace.  You are protecting our valuable watersheds and wildlife habitat.  It is important work because you enhance the working forests and farmlands of the North Quabbin.  And it is important because you are leaving a lasting legacy for your children and their children.

Thank you 

* Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust protects significant natural, agricultural, and scenic areas and encourages land stewardship in North Central and Western Massachusetts for the benefit of the environment, the economy and future generations. To commemorate twenty-five years of land conservation, Mount Grace has been holding twenty-five anniversary events throughout 2011.  The events were selected to represent the entire service area and the diversity of natural resources, landscapes, and conservation projects Mount Grace has worked on since 1986. 


Photo credit: Genevieve Fraser

Rural and Romney by Matt Barron

Rural and Romney

Politics and Government

What would a Romney presidency mean for rural America? Hard to know, but Matt Barron can tell you what his governorship meant for rural Massaschusetts.

By Matt Barron

A 100-year flood on the Connecticut River in October 2005 cut through rural Massachusetts when Mitt Romney was governor.What kind of president would Mitt Romney be for rural America? 

There wasn't much discussion of rural issues in last week's debate, but the void in the debate got me thinking and then, remembering. It was mid-October, 2005, and torrential rains pelted New England, creating amassive flood that left a path of destruction across Massachusetts.

Our governor was Mitt Romney. He had been in office since 2003.

In the hilltown hamlet of Middlefield (pop. 542), Clark Wright Road was washed away as well as a bridge over Glendale Brook. In Franklin County, Huckle Hill Road in Bernardston (pop. 2,155) disappeared from the floods, causing concern as the road is an alternative evacuation route should an accident occur at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant across the state line. 

The neighboring town of Leyden (pop. 772) saw several roads rendered impassible. Rising waters also swept away an entire mobile home park in Greenfield, victimizing dozens of residents and leaving them homeless. 

Springfield television stations captured the surreal scene of thousands of orange pumpkins floating down the Connecticut River from their flooded fields, depriving farmers of an important cash crop soon before Halloween. As worried highway superintendents and local officials called the governor’s office in Boston to request state aid for threatened dams and devastated roads, they found to their dismay that Gov. Mitt Romney was out of state. 

Making matters worse, Romney issued a statement offering the services of the Massachusetts National Guard to New Hampshire. 

Folks looking for insight into how Mitt Romney would treat rural America as president can learn from our experience. When the Massachusetts Legislature passed a sweeping economic stimulus in 2006, Romney vetoed rural broadband access provisions designed to bring high-speed Internet service to the hinterlands. 

He also chopped $3 million for an agricultural innovation center at the University of Massachusetts. 

Luckily for rural Massachusetts, the House and Senate overrode those vetoes by huge margins.

While just 9.2% of Massachusetts residents are considered rural, we cover a lot of geography and the rural economic engine fuels a significant work force. Other New England Republicans, such as ex-Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell and former Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, stepped up to help save dairy farmers in their states, but Mitt Romney turned his back on Bay State dairy producers struggling to stay on the land. He turned a deaf ear to our cranberry growers, whose signature crop contributes more than $50 million in payroll to Massachusetts’s workers and employs some 5,500 people. 

Mitt Romney has a history of nonsupport for the rural community. His 2002 gubernatorial campaign detoured around rural Massachusetts as he avoided any talk of closing the digital divide, protecting the working landscapes of our farms and forests or real solutions to encourage rural economic development. 

Gov. Mitt Romney's official portrait.As governor-elect, he signaled little interest in having rural voices in his administration. Only one of 97 transition team members was from a rural community. 

One month after taking office in 2003, Romney created six “regional competitiveness councils” as the cornerstone of his economic revival strategy. Councils included representatives from agriculture, the forest and wood products and tourism sectors and the hope was to devise a strategy for boosting local economies. 

A year later, Romney dissolved the councils and his director of economic development, who championed the idea, resigned. 

Things got much worse for small towns and rural communities as Romney’s term progressed. The governor’s annual budget shortchanged critical local aid accounts such as payments in-lieu of taxes that reimburse communities for tax-exempt state lands and facilities and regional school transportation payments. Rural towns host huge tracts of state forest and park land which are off the local tax rolls and rural school districts with almost no commercial tax base had to pay ever-increasing bus and van costs for transporting students across multiple towns, many with dirt roads. 

Romney’s smart growth initiative penalized rural towns from the outset. Dubbed “Commonwealth Capital,” the program placed heavy emphasis in calculating a community’s score on such factors as “transit-oriented development” and “commercial infill” even though dozens of rural towns have no public transportation service or town centers with commercial districts. My town of 1,200 has a general store. Period. 

Romney tied a town’s score to its ability to compete for state environmental funds for farmland and open space preservation, programs that had been successful stand-alone entities since the 1970s. Rural towns were shut out because their CommCap scores were so low. 

And it never got better. Voters would do well to pay close attention to Mitt Romney’s long trail of flip-flops and u-turns on policy positions as he campaigns in Iowa with promises to be a great president for rural America. 

Here in rural Massachusetts, we know better and no amount of “Farmers 4 Mitt” signs drawn by campaign staffers can paper over Romney’s abysmal record as governor when it comes to helping our Commonwealth’s 6,000 commercial farmers.

Matt Barron and Deb Kozikowski of Rural Votes
with former presidential hopeful George  McGovern
Denver 2008

Matt Barron is a former reporter who is now a political consultant. He lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.