In the early days, the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction would give us all the glowing details about how much free money the "charitable gift" provided for the donor, usually in addition to the cash he received. They would then often tell us lots of details of other C.E.'s (Conservation Easements), all in great detail, explaining how well the donors came out, and how wonderful it was that they could "continue to live on the farm" while also being one of the world's greatest do-gooders who loved that land way more than any of us conservatives, who were just selfishly looking for a profit.
After a few of those articles, and an attempt by me to get a letter to the editor published which explained some of the facts, as we saw them, there was no more transparency at all.
The Rocky Mountain News (before it merged with the Denver Post and then went out of business) had a very extensive article about C.E.'s, and even published the amount of the tax credits which had been given in each county in Colorado.
It was easy to make a pretty good estimate as to the amount of Santa Claus money going to each one of the C.E.'s in Delta County, because there weren't very many of them at that time. I had estimated that the family of our County Commissioner received at least $400,000.00 for putting a C.E. on very poor land that never would have been developed anyway. This was also a case where there would have been an increase in value for the large remaining "contiguous parcel" owned by the family. It is almost exactly like the case reported in the recent issue of Range Magazine on a ranch in Hawaii. The IRS hammered them on that one, at least for the time being.
In my opinion, almost all the C.E.'s in Delta county are completely useless and are based on bogus appraisals. Not one human or animal has benefited in any way from any C.E. here. Of course none of us ever expected that there would be a benefit because the entire concept is flawed from the beginning.
The only ones who benefit are the people making a living fooling around with C.E.'s, such as planners, Forest Service 'workers', attorneys, appraisers, and the worker bees for the land trusts, The Nature Conservancy, and other assorted parasites.
I still believe that we may be fairly close to the day that the C.E. is exposed for the U.N.-created fraud that it always has been.
It is impossible for the Land Trusts to provide true transparency, because if the whole truth were ever made public, it would be the end of the C.E.... because the average person would then see that there is no public benefit and certainly no benefit to any animal or plant, either.
Lewis Anderson |