Remove ImagesPrison Selling Mud In Two Parts
September 27, 2012
There may not be any gold on Guilford County's 800-acre Prison Farm near Gibsonville, but there are streams, and now several private companies are interested in buying the "stream mitigation" rights for those waterways. Selling those rights could mean a cool million or more for Guilford County – without the county having to do much of anything other than cash the checks and leave the streams as they are once the selected company restores and enhances them.
Stream mitigation efforts are conducted as part of federal and state environmental protection initiatives, which sometimes require that a company destroying or diminishing wetlands in the course of a construction project mitigate that environmental damage by restoring and maintaining streams and rivers in another area.
There's an industry of private companies that buys stream mitigation rights, restores wetland areas, and then "banks" those rights in order to later sell them to developers.
Guilford County interim Facilities Director Sandy Woodard said county officials were approached recently by a representative of the Raleigh office of Environmental Banc & Exchange LLC, a wetland restoration and stream rights banking firm that purchases and trades mitigation rights in five states along the Eastern Seaboard. That firm wanted to discuss purchasing the mitigation rights for streams at the Prison Farm.
Woodard said these types of firms generally clean up the streams, bring them up to specifications laid out in the law and then bank or sell the rights to developers.
Woodard said it was her understanding that Environmental Banc & Exchange wanted the Prison Farm stream mitigation rights in order to bank them.
"It's not tied to any particular project," Woodard said.
She added that county officials met with a representative of the company. However, after those conversations the county decided to sell those rights to the highest bidder – which, by some estimates, could bring over $1 million.
About five years ago Guilford County Commissioner Carolyn Coleman chaired a Prison Farm committee created to study potential uses of the farm. That committee looked into selling the stream mitigation rights at that time. However, Coleman said, nothing came of those discussions largely because Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes didn't seem to be in favor of the idea.
Coleman said that, until recently, the sheriff has been reluctant to look into doing anything that might impede his operations at the Prison Farm, but, she said, Barnes now appears more willing to let go of control of the Prison Farm. She said Barnes has been more accommodating since he finally has the one thing he wanted more than anything else.
"He's got his jail," Coleman said.
Barnes said he has been in conversations with other county officials about selling the stream mitigation rights, and he said he thinks it could be a smart move for Guilford County if handled properly.
"I told them there was money to be made," Barnes said.
He also said selling the rights wouldn't impede his operations.
"For the farm, it wouldn't affect us at all," Barnes said.
According to Barnes, there would be restrictions on what the county could do with the affected land once it sells the stream rights. Most of those obligations, he said, would simply have to do with preservation.
"When you do it, you can't cut the grass – it acts as a filtering system," Barnes said.
Once the preservation rules of the wetlands are in place, those rules bind future owners of the land.
"It's like an easement; they buy the rights and it passes down," he said.
Barnes pointed out that an area of Starmount Forest Country Club in Greensboro is one local example of this type of environmental preservation.
One factor that may have made Barnes' decision easier is that he's in the process of selling the farm's 300 head of cattle and largely getting out of the farming business. These areas weren't used much in the first place, but Barnes does have, for instance, some cattle bridges over the streams.
Barnes said it's his understanding that selling the stream mitigation rights won't affect any plans to develop an industrial park. The Board of Commissioners and area economic development officials have expressed a great deal of interest in turning the Prison Farm into an industrial park. Recently, a large company considered putting a giant food distribution facility on the property. However, that company pulled out.
Barnes said preservation companies study maps and satellite photos to find areas with streams and they discovered that the Prison Farm held a large supply of unsold stream mitigation rights.
The sheriff said that, when the idea first came up about five years ago, former County Manager David McNeill chose not to pursue selling any stream mitigation rights.
"David got a price, but he didn't want to do anything about it," Barnes said. "Nothing came from it."
At that time, the price being thrown around was $500,000. Now that number is over $1 million.
Barnes said about 62 acres would be affected.
The Guilford County Board of Commissioners is expected to put the rights out for bid in the next month or two.
Early last year, Guilford County made over $200,000 by selling dirt at the Prison Farm to a company doing road construction nearby.