WALLINGFORD - The state is preparing to purchase the development rights to an 82-acre tract of farmland near the intersection of Whirlwind Hill and Branford roads for $1.2 million, assuring that the land can be used only for agricultural purposes.

According to Gov. M. Jodi Rell's office, the State Bond Commission approved the purchase of the preservation rights to Cella Farm, a sprawling dairy farm on South Branford Road owned by John and Edward Cella, in December 2008.

That money is now being released to complete the purchase through the state's Farmland Preservation Program, which aims to preserve 130,000 acres of farmland throughout the state, with 85,000 of those acres dedicated to growing crops.

"Purchasing the development rights to Connecticut farms places a permanent restriction on the use of the land," Adam Liegeot, a spokesman for the governor, said Wednesday. "This means that the land Gov. Rell is preserving in Wallingford can never be used for non-agricultural purposes. This farm will now stay under private ownership and continue to pay local property taxes."

Edward Cella was reticent to comment about the deal or its ramifications for his farm or the surrounding community Wednesday, but Joe Dippel, director of the farmland preservation program, was more forthcoming with details.
"They still own it, it's just that now the land can't be subdivided or used for commercial purposes," Dippel said. Deals such as this help the state "to preserve a land base for agricultural production purposes in perpetuity."
Since the program was founded, in 1979, Dippel said, the state has purchased the development rights to more than 35,000 acres on 260 farms.

When buying the rights, the state attempts to preserve land contiguous to or nearby other farmland in the hope of creating a thriving farming community in the area, according to the governor's office.

Cella Farm is close to Gouveia Vineyards, a 140-acre winery on Whirlwind Hill Road, and 249 acres of farmland that the town purchased from George Cooke for $3.8 million in 1998.

The farm has received federal subsidies for corn and dairy as well as livestock, according to the Environmental Working Group's farm subsidy database, with the amounts varying from $1,648 in 2007 up to $49,189 in 2003, when the total included $4,928 in disaster payments.

Dippel said he believed the Cella family was also negotiating a deal to sell the town another 40 acres of land it owns in the area.

"Certainly we're interested in potential property," Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr. said Wednesday, but declined to elaborate further.

If the town were to purchase land from the Cella family, the mayor said, it would be used for open-space purposes.
The town has nearly 5,000 acres reserved for open space, or roughly 15 percent of its 39-square-mile area, according to Jeffrey Borne, chairman of Wallingford's Conservation Commission.

"We set a goal for ourselves that no less than 20 percent of the town should be open space ," Borne said last month. "We're trying to get up to that 20 percent. We just feel like it gives us a lot as a town in terms of farmland, recreation, nature reserves and other uses."