BERRYVILLE, VA (Feb. 8, 2022) More than two decades ago, Clarke County Planning Director Charles “Chuck” Johnston began designing the county’s Conservation Easement Purchase Program (CEP Program) that the Board of Supervisors created by Ordinance on June 18, 2002. The CEP Program helps fund the preservation of land with significant agricultural, natural, scenic, and historic resources. On Feb. 11, 2022, Chuck Johnston will receive the 2021 “Wingate Mackay-Smith Clarke County Land Conservation Award” for his work years ago, which continues to support property owners who want to preserve their land and protect it from future development.
The award will be presented during a luncheon following a Conservation Easement Authority meeting at the Millwood Country Club. Johnston will be recognized as the staff person who largely developed the CEP Program. He researched conservation easements, established criteria for acceptance, and wrote the Code sections for the creation of the Conservation Easement Authority that oversees the CEP Program.
Johnston served as Clarke County's planning director for 22 years before leaving in late 2011 to take a similar position in Calvert County, Md. When he announced his departure, Johnston told The Winchester Star how impressed he was by the county and town officials who worked together to create the Berryville Area Plan to designate future growth areas. “[Clarke County and the Town of Berryville] had an urban development area before urban development areas were thought of in Richmond,” he said.
Currently, Johnston is director of Community Planning and Building Department for the City of Fredericksburg, Va. He earned his graduate degree in City and Regional Planning from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Johnston's tenure in Clarke County included the first attempt by the Salvation Army to put a retreat on farmland along the Shenandoah River (now Casey Tree Farm); construction of a golf course along the Shenandoah River (now Shenandoah River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield); and commercial development at Waterloo and Double Tollgate.
Shortly after Johnston left Clarke County in 2011, Governor Bob McDonnell honored the Clarke County Conservation Easement Authority in April 2012 with an Environmental Excellence Award. The Conservation Easement Authority received the award for its successful efforts to protect and preserve land and for filling an important niche by enabling landowners who might not meet the criteria of other programs to place smaller parcels of land in easement.
Easements are voluntary agreements negotiated between landowners and public agencies in which the landowners agree to place specific restrictions on the use and development of their property in exchange for payment and various income and estate tax benefits. The Clarke County Conservation Easement Authority recorded its first easement in 2003.
When CEP Program properties are included with other conservation holdings, such as those held by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, about 25 percent — 26,790 acres — of Clarke County open space is permanently protected, and hundreds of dwelling unit rights have been retired as of January 2022. At 178-square miles (113,920 acres), Clarke is the eighth smallest county in Virginia. The county also maintains a sliding scale zoning policy that preserves large tracts of land by permitting fewer dwelling unit rights per acre for larger existing parcels.
In 2015, the Conservation Easement Authority established the Wingate Mackay-Smith Clarke County Land Conservation Award to honor individuals, groups, and organizations for their significant contributions to the preservation and protection of open spaces in Clarke County. The annual award also draws attention to the need for land conservation and the role easements play in preserving natural and historic resources.
Mackay-Smith was the first recipient of the award as she was instrumental in helping the Board establish the Clarke County Conservation Easement Authority, and she helped negotiate the Authority’s first easement purchase — historic Greenway Court — the colonial-era home of Lord Thomas Fairfax. Other Wingate Mackay-Smith Clarke County Land Conservation Award recipients are: Holy Cross Abbey (2015); G. Robert Lee, Margaret Maizel, Robert Mitchell, and A.R. “Pete” Dunning (2016); Melvin Kohn (2017); Joe and Denise Sipe (2018); J. Michael Hobert (2019); and the American Battlefield Trust and Shenandoah University (2020).
For more information about conservation easements, contact Clarke County Easement Authority Specialist Alison Teetor at (540) 955-5177 or ateetor@clarkecounty.gov. Learn more at clarkelandconservation.org.
