Adams County is one of the fastest growing counties in Pennsylvania in reference to people moving in and the development needed to support them. Land use is becoming an issue because there is a steady loss of farmland to development and open space is becoming a buzz word here as it is in so many other counties in Pennsylvania and across the country. Therefore, the citizens and communities of Adams county are joining together to help preserve open space.

Open space is a term that is used to indicate space that has been set aside from development to just exist undeveloped, or to be utilized for farming or recreational activities. It is useful on a community level to keep the community greener, as well as help keep places cooler, and to avoid that euphemism of a concrete jungle.  Adams County, it s neighbor Franklin County, and Pike and Monroe counties in the Pocono’s make up the four fastest growing counties out of the sixty-seven in the state.

In 2005 Adams County Extension held a summit called Ag Innovations, which is an offshoot from the Future of Farming programming that Economic and Community Development offers, and this meeting eventually came up with three strategies for Adams County to help strengthen and support agriculture, one of the county’s key industries. The first idea that they had was to enhance agriculture productivity, the second was to market agriculture bettering innovative ways, and the third idea involved land use.

This third idea, land use, was mostly because of the growth in residential devevlopment. Adams County is just north of the Mason-Dixon line, and has been attracting more development of farm land.  Eventually this idea led to a citizen’s group called Keep Adams Green. Their goal as a group was to encourage the county commissioners to provide funding to keep farmland and open space in Adams County. This group was motivated and successful, convincing the County Commissioners to appoint an advisory committee to create the Adams County Green Space Grant Program, which was approved by the county on March 21st of 2007.

The grant program is designed to increase community involvement in the initiative, by providing matching funds for the acquisition of land to be used for open space, farmland and passive recreation.  The funding amount for the year of 2008 is one million dollars, and was approved by the county commissioner of Adams County. The committee hopes this amount can be matched or exceeded in years to come. Currently, pre-applications for grant monies are being accepted.

The grant program was set up to be administered by a committee of both voting and advisory members,  Judy Chambers, an Educator for Economic and Community Development, was asked to serve on the committee in an advisory position, a position Chambers accepted. Chambers brings to the committee her experience in local government, and a firm sense of how to set goals and follow through with them.
This is not the only effort to preserve land in Adams County, however, and others are making an effort to keep farmland under protection. About five thousand acres are currently under the protection of the Land Conservancy of Adams County. The conservancy can be found at http://www.lcacnet.org/.

August, 2007