Planning commission reviews agricultural priority-area analysis as county seeks tools to preserve 60,000 acres

St. Mary’s County planning staff on Sept. 8 told the Planning Commission that meeting the county’s goal to preserve 60,000 acres of agricultural land will require new approaches, additional local funding tools and targeted use of existing state and federal programs.

Sue Beeth, environmental planner for the county, and Jeff (staff presenter), summarized an analysis and mapped focus areas in the county. Beeth explained the technical result of staff’s parcel analysis: “If you took all of those lands that are eligible, that you could only preserve and you preserved every acre of them, you would only preserve about 36,000 acres,” she told commissioners, adding that the county’s 2005 Land Preservation, Parks and Recreation Plan already identified primary agricultural focus areas in the northwest and central county.

Why it matters: the 2006…