Hoping to find a solution that satisfies all parties, Wasatch County is receiving guidance from the Summit Land Conservancy to create a conservation easement for the Jordanelle Ridge development.  The easement is not yet ready for adoption, with outstanding questions from Heber City and develop ers. But Summit Land Conservancy CEO Cheryl Fox outlined specific terms to adjust in the agreement and conservation values that may be added.  Wasatch County Council members, like Colleen Bonner, said their main priority is to do the conservation easement once, to do it right and not to rush.  “These are very complicated issues, and if we don’t work through it and take the time, and we get in a hurry, we end up with something that none of us really want,” Bonner said. “And years down the road we go, ‘Man, that was not what our intentions were.’” The larger promise of open space was made when the Jordanelle Ridge development was annexed into Heber City in 2020. In October, the Summit Land Conservancy and Wasatch County Open Lands board members, including Heber City Mayor Heidi Franco, raised the alarm about the conservation easement. The biggest challenge for Franco was that the 1,900 acres of open space were, she said, not a true conservation easement.  At the time, Franco said what was being proposed was not what was originally discussed. Her qualm was with who holds the conservation easement. For Franco and other Wasatch Open Lands Board members, that should be a land trust. The current proposal would give power to Wasatch County, Heber City and Jordanelle Ridge development’s homeowners association. Now, Franco said she hopes the board will hold the county to certain standards for conservation easements in the Jordanelle Ridge development.  “And that would be, you know, in perpetuity, the land trust holding the easement. … Having actual maps of the land that will be left untouched or with a trails map that was decided before, and then having other maps delineate where the infrastructure improvements will go in,” Franco said.  Fox recommended that the Wasatch County Council include suggestions if Heber City plans to hold the conservation easement, such as enhancing language to ensure protection of the public benefit, clarifying that Heber City and Wasatch County have the right to access and enter into the easement property and clarifying the difference between undeveloped open space and developed open space.  But, Franco has said Heber City does not have the “expertise” to monitor compliance, “even with a really good easement that seems clear as a bell.”  “Only a land trust has the ability to do that,” Franco said, adding that the way this conservation easement is set up will set the tone for future easements in the area. “I want us to do it right and not make it worse when there’s even more land at stake.” The post Wasatch County inches closer to a formal conservation easement for Jordanelle Ridge open space appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less