More prime Corrales farmland may be protected from development as home sites if negotiations with landowners are successful this summer.

Exactly how much acreage would be brought under the Village of Corrales’ conservation easement program has not been determined, and location and ownership of the tract has not been disclosed while negotiations are under way.

But the Village Council has approved a contract with the New Mexico Land Conservancy in Santa Fe to negotiate terms of the easement, Mayor Phil Gasteyer said February 2. “Our Farmland Preservation and Agricultural Commission has identified a prospect for acquiring a new conservation easement.”

Gasteyer said the tract in question is perhaps eight acres, and that an easement protecting it from residential or commercial development might be attached to a portion of that acreage.

He said the owners are heirs in an estate. Two villagers who launched the Village’s  farmland preservation effort, Bonnie Gonzales, now chairman of the  farmland preservation commission, and Taudy Smith, then Corrales planning and zoning administrator, initiated discussion with family members.

Gasteyer said funds to acquire the easement are expected to come from the $230,000 remaining from sale of municipal bonds voters approved in 2004 and from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm and Ranchland Protection Program.

In June 2007, The USDA’s program allocated $282,565 for the Village of Corrales’ program to purchase conservation easements on productive farmland. It was the agency’s second grant in  two years: in 2006, USDA gave Corrales $292,000. An initial grant of $1.1 million helped launch the Villages’ program in  2004.

In addition to the 2006 and 2007 USDA grants, the Corrales program had $200,000 from the State Legislature and $400,000 in cash left over from the sale of the Village’s first round of municipal bonds issues for the acquisition of easements on farmland.

The bond proceeds came after voters here overwhelmingly supported a $2.5 million bond question in August 2004. 

 Application forms to participate in the farmland preservation program can be obtained at the Village Office.