One preservation tool is to purchase development rights from farmers.
When taxpayers purchase development rights from farmers to prevent new home construction, they pay once and they're done.
There are also schemes to purchase development rights from farmers and ranchers who want to stay in agriculture.
In 1998, in an effort to stave off development, the state began a farmland preservation program to purchase development rights from farmers.
Mr. Simone is completing construction of 14 luxury residences built on speculation at Stone Manors at Purchase, a project that sold out in fewer than 18 months, as well as several houses in another Purchase development.
Suffolk has preserved 8,638 acres of farms since 1977 by purchasing development rights, said Carrie Meek Gallagher, the Suffolk County commissioner for environment and energy, who oversees the county departments that identify parcels for preservation and acquire them.
Supporters of farm preservation said that purchasing development rights, a practice pioneered by Suffolk County and in use since the mid-1970's in East Hampton and other East End towns, was a proven method to keep land in agriculture and forever free of housing.
The five PES schemes are: (1) fee-simple acquisition, (2) subsidies, (3) tradable development rights with zoning, (4) mitigation banking, and (5) purchased development rights easements.
This would allow a jurisdiction to set aside land and make efforts to purchase development rights or use other methods to preserve upland habitats at high enough percentages and distances from the breeding ponds to support R. aurora.
Its home homebuilding operations include the construction and sale of single-family attached and detached homes, as well as the purchase, development and sale of residential land directly and through unconsolidated entities in which it has investments.
