The Oakley City Council approved a conservation easement on city-owned trails east of Pinion Lane Dec. 10. The agreement covers 81 acres in all.
Mayor Zane Woolstenhulme, who signed the agreement, said the terms are “probably tighter” than any other conservation easement Oakley has worked on with the Summit Land Conservancy.
“It is going to protect — in perpetuity — those assets that the city has,” he said at the Wednesday meeting. “Yet it will give us the flexibility if we want to do trail improvements, if we need to make more infrastructure improvements for our water system.”
The Summit Land Conservancy will hold and enforce the easement, which bans future development but upholds trail use.
According to Oakley recorder Amy Rydalch, the easement covers land that’s home to important city wells.
“All of this area, in some fashion, is geographically the area where we have our highest-value water assets,” Rydalch said. “It's also in an area that is considered sensitive lands from our official city maps. This is an area where most of the area is in excess of 30% slope, and so this is not an area that we would want to particularly see developed for that reason as well.”
Summit Land Conservancy CEO Cheryl Fox called the conservation easement a testament to city-land trust collaboration. She said it’s the third project Summit Lands and Oakley have done together and part of the wider Weber River Pathway initiative.
“About 10 years ago, a group of citizens from Oakley came to the Summit Land Conservancy, and they had a vision of a path, a trail all along the Weber River as it runs through Oakley,” Fox told KPCW Dec. 12. “And it was really inspiring.”
The property covered by the latest easement is across Pinion Lane from the newly expanded Oakley Bike Park as well as another potential land trust project, a green cemetery.
The east and west sides of the road are all one property, but the city council hasn’t decided on what the terms of a cemetery conservation easement should be.
“It's always good that the city takes time to really analyze the uses of these properties, because these conservation easements are forever,” Fox said.
Adding an easement on the other side of Pinion would mean preserving another 63 acres at the foot of the Uinta Mountains.
Summit Land Conservancy is a financial supporter of KPCW.
