YOUNGSTOWN Mill Creek park board signs pact to save land

Easement owners must ensure that the land will not be developed.
By IAN HILL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- About 66 acres in Camp Stambaugh are off-limits to developers as a result of an agreement signed by the Mill Creek MetroParks board of park commissioners.
The board will work with the Mahoning County Soil and Water Conservation District to ensure that the land is not developed for the next 15 years. After that, the park board will be solely responsible for protecting the land, which is now considered a conservation easement.
Camp Stambaugh is a Boy Scout camp on Tippecanoe Road in Canfield Township.
"That land can never be developed," said Susan Dicken, the director of park development for Mill Creek MetroParks. "The easement is forever."
Easements encouraged: The Ohio Department of Natural Resources encourages landowners to create conservation easements in wetlands. Indian Run, a tributary of Mill Creek, flows through the Camp Stambaugh land.
Development that would disrupt the wetland is not permitted in the easement.
The board and the SWCD purchased the development rights to the land for $108,000. The land is owned by the Boy Scouts.
Money for the purchase came from a $300,000 Ohio Department of Natural Resources grant. The rest of the grant was used to make smaller purchases for conservation easements in other areas of the county.
A total of 300 acres in the Mill Creek and Yellow Creek watersheds have been placed in conservation easements during the last two years.
On Friday, the park board also agreed to consider allowing First Energy and Ohio Edison to erect 70-foot-tall power poles on a utility easement in Hitchcock Woods. A sewer line runs through the easement.
The companies want the power poles to connect a power station on U.S. Route 224 in Boardman to a proposed substation that would be built at the intersection of Western Reserve and Tippecanoe roads. The park board wants to determine if the companies can erect the poles in another location.
hill@vindy.com