Development credits preserve green future

A KEY element to cleaning up Puget Sound begins far from the shoreline. Conserving forestlands and watersheds around urban areas creates healthy buffer zones and limits future development with its pollution destined for the Sound.

No surprise the agency charged with Sound cleanup was a cheerleader for an extraordinary conservation deal King County reached with Seattle-based Plum Creek Timber.

The company will still own, manage and be able to log the 45,500 acres in Southeast King County, but future housing development is precluded — forever. No tax money is involved. Plum Creek receives 514 development credits it can sell to developers looking for more density on projects in urban areas.

King County partners with local communities to allow another extra floor of building height or more living units per credit, which are bought and sold in their own market.

Innovation and cooperation between willing private-property owners and government officials have helped build what King County Executive Ron Sims describes as a wall against sprawl, the protection of forestlands adjacent to urban areas.

The conservation deal with Plum Creek echoes and complements the purchase of development rights four years ago by King County from the Hancock Timber Resource Group. The company received $22 million for development rights on 90,000 acres of its Snoqualmie Forest.

Sims and Plum Creek Chief Executive Officer Rick Holley signed a conservation easement Tuesday that covers a swath of land twice the size of Bellevue.

One of the forward-looking benefits of the easement is the protection of the Upper Green River Watershed, which provides drinking water for the city of Tacoma and other communities.

Conserving forestlands gives future generations options and choices, and helps guide and maximize public investment. Protecting resources as basic as drinking water supplies is an extraordinary bonus.

Transferring development rights on property that appears remote and distant from the press of civilization in 2008 will be applauded as brilliant foresight by generations to come.