Connecticut Farmland Protected by State
Agricultural Conservation Easement Cannot Be Converted to a Golf
Course
Connecticut’s commissioner of agriculture will
protect agricultural easements. The Conveyance of Development
Rights in 1986 and 1987 declared that farmer Joseph Koniecko,
who received $232,603.00 in exchange, acknowledged that the perpetual
easement under the Connecticut statute had the purpose that “agricultural
land be maintained and preserved for farming and food production
purposes.” Subsequent trustees who acquired the Preston,
Conn., farm in 1993 could not develop a golf course (with a large
club house and parking lots, among other things) even if it is
a “greenway” and serves tourism as “sustainable
agriculture,” ruled Judge Keller of the Superior Court in
Hartford in Bruce Gresczyk, Commissioner of Agriculture vs.
Virginia Landis, et. al. in May 2006. The court also threw
out arguments that the town zoning powers and the state conservation
plan override the negative easement, that the easements are a
fraudulent scheme where influential farmers got the highest prices,
that a golf course is a turf grass farm (although no plan existed
to harvest turf), and that the state acquired sand and gravel
mining rights and the right to build homes without just compensation.
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