Dec 3, 2008 6:54 pm US/Eastern
O'Malley Announces Plans To Save Land
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) ―
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The word "green" has been grafted onto a lot of concepts. Maryland is throwing one more out. It's called GreenPrint.
CBS
The word "green" has been grafted onto a lot of concepts. Maryland is throwing one more out. It's called GreenPrint.
As
Alex DeMetrick reports, it works like a blueprint for nature.
At least 21 percent of Maryland is open space and 21 percent has been plowed up for development, putting the rest of the state in a balancing act between subdivisions and farms. Farmers have talked in the past about the pressure to sell.
On Wednesday in Annapolis Governor Martin O'Malley unveiled a new choice, with a new name. It's called GreenPrint.
Right now, that prime land is the watershed that filters runoff before it enters streams and the Chesapeake Bay.
"It's an ecological inventory of the land in Maryland. It identifies those areas that are most important ecologically, so that when the state expends its resources, it's spent in the right place," said Nat Williams, Nature Conservancy.
In the past, Maryland has awarded millions of dollars in rural legacy grants, buying land from farmers to guarantee it stays rural. The idea of land staying open for new generations can make the difference between development and preservation.
Saving open space isn't cheap. The estimated cost of the first two parcels unveiled Wednesday is $80 million.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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