SUMTER, S.C. — Protecting and conserving land near Shaw Air Force Base is the goal behind a new ordinance. Sumter City Council passed the conservation easement in its final reading on Tuesday.
“It is integral to the community,” Tim Davis shared about the base.
Along with his wife Sonja, Davis first moved to Sumter in August 2002 when the now-retired couple was transferred to Shaw Air Force Base from Florida.
“When we first moved here, we were looking for breakfast places and all they had was fast food and we were like ‘Oh my God,” Sonja laughed. “And coincidentally, four years later, we got stationed here and we're like, ‘Oh my God. This is where we’re going to be.’ But years later, it has grown.”
“This town was very small, it looked nothing like it looks right now,” Davis remembered. “And one of the things we always talk about is the growth in this community since we’ve been here and I think Shaw was integral to that growth.”
As Sumter and the base continue to grow, Sumter City Council is working to protect 768 acres of land near Shaw Air Force Base known as Carter Farm on Frierson Road from private development encroachment.
“A conservation easement is just an agreement, legal agreement, a binding agreement that is recorded on the deed of the property and restricts certain uses and certain development,” Congaree Land Trust Executive Director Stuart White said.
The nonprofit works with landowners to conserve properties, “whether they be individuals or cities or counties or whoever, to conserve special places, scenic lands, farms, forest, wetlands, significant habitats and so forth,” White said.
According to the ordinance, Congaree Land Trust believes the property qualifies as a “relatively natural habitat of fish, wildlife, or plants, or similar ecosystem and/or open space (including farmland and forest land) for the scenic enjoyment of the general public or pursuant to a clearly defined Federal, State, or local governmental conservation policy, and will yield a significant public benefit.”
“Basically what it's trying to do is keep lands around our military bases in a compatible use, such as a farm and forest, open spaces and those sorts of things so that the military can continue to practice it’s mission to train and to do the things that our military needs to be able to do to be prepared to defend our country,” White explained about the most recent easement in Sumter.
“It’s the economic engine,” Mayor David Merchant said about the base’s relation to Sumter. “It’s a $1.2, 3, billion economic engine here in Sumter for us, but it also, it brings people in from all around the world and we get to have friends here for two or three years, however long they’re stationed, so they bring their different ways of life and it’s fun for them to be a part of our community and get to know them as well.”
Merchant says protecting the base by making sure people aren’t developing land near flight lines is important.
The city unanimously passed Ordinance 2842 outlining the specific details.
“Some of it is going into an easement that will never be developed, and then some is saved just for if the base needs to expand, we’re able to offer that to them,” Merchant explained. “So it’s all about protecting the base, protecting that resource that we have of our air force friends and soldiers out there.”
This easement is part of the United States Department of Defense’s Midlands Area Join Installation Consortium (MAJIC), which falls under the Readiness and Environmental Protection Program (REPI).
“The REPI/MAJIC program in the Midlands has conserved a little over 23,000 acres around our military bases,” White said.
MAJIC formed in 2007 in response to a pressing need to protect training resources at Fort Jackson, Shaw Air Force Base, McEntire Joint National Guard Base, Poinsett Bombing Range and McCrady Training Center, according to the Department of Defense.
Through September 2022, the department says it has preserved 22,751 acres during 42 transactions, which cost a total of $24.7 million.
“[Sumter is] making sure that the land that’s around those bases are protected because the military and their footprint in the Midlands of South Carolina and across our state, it’s huge," White said. "Over $6 billion a year in our state with an economic impact. So that’s going to help protect the livelihood of the city of Sumter. Every single year we visit the property, make sure it’s being managed the way that they’ve said they’re going to manage it and agreed to manage it.”
The specific area included in this ordinance adjoins Horsepen Branch, which flows into Green Swamp, then Cane Savannah Creek which forms headwaters of the Pocotaligo River, according to the ordinance.
The ordinance also says the area “contains a small intact Carolina Bay and a number of old drainage ditches” and “is located near the COWASEE Basin Focus Area, an important conservation area identified and targeted for protection by a partnership made up of private landowners and conservation agencies and organizations…”
While this land cannot be privately developed, the ordinance does allow for a few improvements, which include construction of structures like public bathrooms and signs, agricultural improvements, fences, new roads, hiking and watching trails and utility lines.
