ClearWater Conservancy is nearing the finish line of an effort to ensure that a 188-year-old farm is protected from development in perpetuity.
The organization has reached $725,000 of its $875,000 goal to acquire a conservation easement for the 110-acre Hess Farm off of Shingletown Road in Harris Township and expects to complete the project in 2026, ClearWater representatives told State College Borough Council and Harris Township’s Board of Supervisors this week. A conservation easement permanently restricts use of land to protect its natural resources, regardless of the owner.
An active beef cattle farm that dates back to 1837 and is in its seventh generation of family ownership, Hess Farm sits along Roaring Run, a tributary of Slab Cabin Run, and its preservation represents the latest step in ClearWater Conservancy’s Slab Cabin Run Initiative.
“This work that we’ve been doing in Slab Cabin Run for about 15 years has all been oriented around groundwater protection, making sure that our drinking water supply is clean and that we can provide enough infiltration to secure the volume of water that we need for this community,” ClearWater Conservancy Executive Director Elizabeth Crisfield told the Harris Township board.
The Slab Cabin Run subwatershed encompasses the wellhead protection zone located just south of the borough to Rothrock State Forest for the State College Borough Water Authority’s Harter-Thomas wells, which were drilled in the 1960s and are a major source of drinking water for people in seven municipalities.
Ryan Hamilton, land conservation manager for ClearWater Conservancy, called the landscape of the Slab Cabin Run area a “conservation mosaic where you have a lot of different entities, a lot of different partners organizations working together using different tools and strategies to achieve common goals.” Those include farms conserved by the Centre County Agricultural Preservation Program, land acquired by the SCBWA and agricultural and forest properties acquired and conserved by ClearWater, which has also worked with property owners on riparian restoration.
A major piece of the Slab Cabin Run initiative was accomplished in 2017, when ClearWater Conservancy completed a $2.75 million fundraising effort to permanently conserve the 300 acres of the Meyer and Everhart farms in College and Harris townships.
ClearWater Conservancy has been working on a conservation easement for Hess Farm dating back to 2018.
“Really, there’s four conservation priorities,” Hamilton to State College Borough Council. “It’s protection of that Zone 2 source water protection area, the forests and wildlife of Tussey Mountain, productive agricultural land and exceptional value and high-quality streams. [Hess Farm] really checks all four of these boxes…”
Hess Farm owners Jeff and Cindy Harding “have been very invested in conservation over many years,” Crisfield said.
“Over the last 20 years or so they’ve done a significant amount of work to make sure that they’re implementing best conservation practices on the property,” Hamilton explained. “So everything from riparian stream crossings and fencing to plantings and restoration work, gravity-fed water feeders, a new heavy-use area and manure storage area — they’ve really done a lot to make this just an excellent conservation property.”
ClearWater has received a variety of support for the Hess Farm easement, which involves acquiring the development rights for the property adjacent to the regional growth boundary to ensure it is permanently conserved and covering transaction fees. That support includes the Natural Resources Conservation Service Regional Conservation Partnership Program, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, the William C. Bullitt Foundation, the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds, the community and Hess-Harding family themselves, as well as funds from ClearWater’s reserves.
Crisfield and Hamilton asked the township and borough to consider contributing toward the final $150,000, though did not request a specific amount.
“I think it’s really important for for all of us to know that these projects take a lot of partners and they take a lot of time,” Hamilton said. “You can see the history of this Slab Cabin Run Initiative over time. I think it’s incredible commitment to the work by not just ClearWater but all of the partners that have been part of it. So I think we can really thank our local decision makers for continuing to commit to this and making this possible. I think it’s important that we continue to talk to our friends and neighbors about this. Drinking water is incredibly important to all of us, not to mention productive local agricultural lands.”
Crisfield said that the Slab Cabin Run Initiative has not only been used to protect lands and water, but also for education and outreach and to study and implement best practices for improving groundwater recharge.
“I think a lot of us just turn the tap on and we know the water is good,” Crisfield said. “So we really don’t have to think about it too hard, but we want to make sure that it’s good forever. Continuing to talk about the importance of water protection, I think is important. We will be having more education and outreach events about this project in the spring. So I’m hoping that people will come out to learn more about the water supply.”
