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Several environmental and Congressional leaders are moving to preserve Potomac River lands for the future by reaching into the past-reviving a long-dormant partnership that helped make the Capital Beltway region green.
The bill, called the National Capital Region Land Preservation Act, seeks to secure up to $50 million a year for five years in federal funding for preserving land in the Greater Washington metropolitan region, much of it along the Potomac.
That money would be used with funds from Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia to buy land and keep it in green space. The National Park Service would administer the grant program, but local governments would hold title to the land.
If enacted, the bill could help protect land along the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Water Trail, which includes several sites along the Potomac, as well as land near Great Falls, Rock Creek and Anacostia parks.
"If we had a resource like this today, with the kind of real estate opportunities we have now because of the market, there are a lot of wonderful places that can be acquired," said Paul Gilbert, executive director of the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority.
The Washington area used to have such a source. Back in 1930, Congress signed into law the Capper-Cramton Act, which created the National Capital Planning Commission and authorized millions of dollars to acquire and preserve land in Maryland, Virginia and the District.
Over the years, Capper money paid for the George Washington and Rock Creek parkways. The Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority has nearly 11,000 acres under its control as parkland and open space, and much of that was made possible through Capper funding, Gilbert said. Capper, and the regional planning that went with it, also laid out the green space for the National Mall.
But after the 1960s, when the District got home rule, funding for Capper began to dry up, and the regional planning authority weakened as the states began to preserve land on their own. As more people moved into the area, land prices reached a premium, making preservation harder. The landscape quickly changed from one with a lot of undeveloped parkland to one that needed to accommodate a growing population of at least 5 million, and counting.
"This is kind of like going back to the future, in a way," said Ed McMahon, senior fellow in sustainable development at the Urban Land Institute and author of a well-regarded book on green infrastructure. "Think about how different D.C. would be without that law. Imagine Maryland without all of that great parkland in Montgomery and Prince George's counties."
Bill Dickinson, an Alexandria resident and longtime Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority board member, had long wondered why the Maryland side of the Potomac seemed to have more green space than Virginia's. When he did the research, he discovered that Capper had come about when a few Washington residents banded together to fight two large dams on the Potomac that would have, among other things, destroyed parts of Great Falls. He also discovered that, from the outset, Maryland effectively used the Capper funding. When it went away, Maryland replaced it with Program Open Space. Virginia has never had a similar open-space funding mechanism.
Dickinson wondered if Capper could be reauthorized to once again enable the Capitol region to preserve land. When he learned that it could, he worked with Virginia U.S. Rep. Jim Moran to draft a bill. The bill is pending before the House Natural Resources Committee.
No hearing has been scheduled, but Dickinson has plans to meet with both House and Senate aides in the coming weeks to further make his case. So far, more than 20 land preservation and civic groups have signed on to support the National Capitol Region Land Preservation Act. Nearly all of the representatives and senators whose districts are affected also support it.
Moran's press secretary, Emily Blout, said the representative and other sponsors don't have a specific tract in mind for preservation.
"There are lots of candidate sites, but until the program is authorized, conservation groups and state and local governments are doing what they can with existing resources or forgoing conservation efforts for lack of funds," Blout said.
Dickinson said that he hopes President Barack Obama's executive order calling for more protection of the Chesapeake Bay will boost the case for the bill. And, like Gilbert, he thinks the window of opportunity created by a sagging real estate market won't be open for much longer.
"We have to start thinking, in Stafford, what do we protect? What do we protect in the Northern Neck?" he asked. "We have to take a look at how this megalopolis is growing."
