Price tag for open space put at $2.6B
It would cost taxpayers nearly $2.6 billion to buy the most biologically valuable land for Pima County's groundbreaking Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, county officials say. It would include about 536,000 acres of grasslands, saguaro forests, mesquite scrub deserts, old-growth ironwood forests, riparian areas and other land prized by scientists for its ability to support a wide variety of plant and animal species.
County officials prepared the estimate to help their Conservation Acquisition Commission decide how much money to seek to have put on the ballot for a possible 2008 bond election. County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, one of the Sonoran plan's architects, has said he would want a bond election totaling somewhere between $500 and $600 million, including not just open space but a wide range of other kinds of projects.
The county could also require developers to set aside environmentally valuable land in exchange for rezonings. Or, it could adopt regulations allowing developers to transfer the rights to develop environmentally sensitive land to less sensitive land.
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