OWASA Gets Cane Creek Conservation Easement

• Chapel Hill Herald (NC)
• November 19, 2005
• December 8, 2007
• Author: From staff reports

CARRBORO -- OWASA has received a gift of a 10-acre conservation easement in the Cane Creek watershed from a former chairman of the utility's board and her husband.

Bernadette Pelissier and Vann Bennett's gift of the easement on the land in the headwaters of the Cane Creek Reservoir will permanently prevent development of the wooded parcel off Mystic Lane in rural Orange County. The easement is especially valuable to OWASA because it includes a portion of Cane Creek, the tributary stream for which OWASA's largest reservoir is named.

Keeping land near the reservoir and its tributaries in a natural state helps protect the lake from pollution carried in stormwater runoff.

Pelissier said she and her husband decided to give the easement to OWASA because "We understand the value to water quality and to maintaining wildlife corridors of preventing building adjacent to streams."

Pelissier and Bennett donated a similar conservation easement on an adjacent 10 acres in 2003.

As part of its overall water quality protection strategy since 1990, OWASA has acquired ownership or conservation easements to prevent or limit development on more than 1,500 acres in the Cane Creek watershed. Except for the Bennett-Pelissier donations, these purchases were achieved through a combination of grants from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund and funds from OWASA customers.

Any property owner interested in giving land or a conservation easement to OWASA in the Cane Creek Reservoir watershed or University Lake watershed is invited to contact Ed Holland, OWASA's planning director, at 537-4215 (e-mail: eholland@owasa.org) for more information.