Easement protects lakefront land from development
Source: Knoxville News Sentinel Co., by Scott Barker
June 11, 2007
KINGSTON - High on the bluff overlooking Watts Bar Lake in Roane County, a bald eagle perches atop the tip of a dead tree. From a passing boat, its body seems little more than an inky scratch on a blue sky.
Its fledgling young flank their nest, barely visible in a nearby pine. They do not stir.
The pontoon boat, owned and captained by Bob Van Hook, putters past a mile and a half of wooded shoreline.
"It's unusual to have two (young eagles) survive," Van Hook says. "Usually only one survives."
A broad-shouldered 65-year-old with a deep tan and a cap covering his bald head, Van Hook points out animal habitat, like the dead trees that attract red-headed woodpeckers, as he pilots the boat.
Ospreys frolic overhead. A blue heron takes off from the bank low across the bow of the boat toward its rookery on Long Island.
Like the boat, the land belongs to Van Hook. With lakefront property going for $225,000 to $500,000 an acre, the 307-acre enclave is worth millions.
But Van Hook, the retired chief of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, and his wife of 43 years will not see a dime from its development. No one will.
That's because the ink is now dry on a conservation easement that bans development of the property in perpetuity. With the exception of a pair of home sites for the Van Hooks' two grown children, the property will remain a forest with fields of native grasses interspersed throughout.
Bob and Nancy Van Hook donated the easement to the Foothills Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization originally formed to preserve land adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Blount County. The Van Hooks will retain ownership and can sell the land or bequeath it as they see fit.
The conservancy has expanded its reach, however, to include lakefront property, farms and other environmentally significant land. The organization has helped preserve the Kyker Bottoms Wildlife Refuge near Vonore, the Smith Bend/Yuchi Refuge in Rhea County, and the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge at the confluence of the Hiwassee and Tennessee rivers on Chickamauga Lake.
When conservation easements are placed on property, it typically loses value because of development restrictions included in the easement. For example, the Van Hooks' property can't be subdivided.
"They basically donated all the development rights," says Bill Clabough, a former state senator who is executive director of the Foothills Land Conservancy.
However, deed restrictions haven't necessarily meant that property tax levies reflect the lower market value of the property.
Until now.
Pending Gov. Phil Bredesen's signature, a bill passed by both houses of the state Legislature last week allows conservation easements to be counted as urban greenbelts.
"This bill will make sure you'd see a decrease in property taxes," Clabough says.
Bob Van Hook says changes in federal tax laws a few years ago made donating conservation easements more attractive, too.
"That can't be and should not be the main reason to go into an easement," he said. "We didn't even know about it until we were well into it."
A trip to their native South Carolina convinced the Van Hooks that preserving land from development would be a fitting legacy. They traveled the entire Palmetto State coastline and say they were appalled that virtually the entire seashore has been developed, especially the places where as youngsters in the 1950s they fished together.
It was Nancy Van Hook, a petite, vivacious 66-year-old who still speaks with a Low Country lilt, who pushed the idea of preserving their property.
"Future generations deserve this," she says. "I told Bob, 'This is worth it. This is what it's all about.' "
"We're not anti-development," her husband says. "But not everything needs to be developed."
The Van Hooks began assembling their property about a decade ago, buying a parcel here and a parcel there from Bowater Inc.
The park-like preserve is home to deer, wild turkey, foxes, hawks, bluebirds and other animal life, including the eagles nesting above the shoreline. The eagles sometimes light in the pines that screen their sprawling home from the water.
They also are trying to attract quail.
"What you have to do is change the habitat so they have a place to hide," Bob Van Hook says. "There are quail in the area. You just have to have the habitat to attract them."
To attract those quail, he's started clearing fields and planting native warm-weather grasses like Indian grass and switchgrass. He's also reclaiming a pit where iron ore was mined in the late 1800s.
The Van Hooks maintain their property as a "stewardship forest." Bob Van Hook planted patches of loblolly pines that will be harvested when they mature. Under a logging plan formulated with the help of the Tennessee Division of Forestry, he also plans to selectively cut hardwoods.
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service are assisting the Van Hooks, too. The Van Hooks are so enthusiastic about land preservation - they're talking up conservation easements to other lakefront property owners - that Bob Van Hook has joined the Foothills Land Conservancy's board of directors.
"Nancy and Bob are great ambassadors for the Foothills Land Conservancy," Clabough said.
An insect ecologist by training, Bob Van Hook was assistant director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and later head of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant as president of Lockheed Martin Energy Systems.
"A bug man in charge of a nuclear weapons plant," he says with a laugh.
Bob Van Hook retired in 2000. Though he still works as a consultant, much of his time is spent toiling on his property.
"I find it enjoyable," he says. "It beats the hell out of sitting behind a desk."
All that work, he says, will benefit his children and grandchildren, as well as the boaters who ply that stretch of Watts Bar Lake.
"It's public, but it's also private," Bob Van Hook says. "While my family will own it, the public can enjoy it."
