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Tennessee officials working to acquire large piece of Cumberland Trail

By: Pam Sohn
(Contact)

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Tammy Heise

State officials hope to use money from the governor’s Tennessee Heritage Conservation Trust Fund to initiate the purchase of another chunk of land for the Cumberland Trail State Park.

The 10.5-mile, 3,200-acre stretch, called the Kinzalow Acquisition, is in Hamilton and Rhea counties and would provide a critical link to the Cumberland Trail between Dayton in Rhea County and Sale Creek in Hamilton County, said Tammy Heise, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

A $1 million grant, approved Thursday by the Heritage Conservation Trust Fund Board, is time sensitive, Ms. Heise said.

“The Heritage Conservation Trust Fund Board gave (groups working on the negotiation) until Dec. 31, 2008, to show they had taken action to get an option on the property,” she said. “They have one year, however, to apply the grant funds toward the purchase.”

The first step in the process is a conservation easement to protect the land from being subdivided for commercial development, she said. The second step will be outright buying the property, she said.

The groups working with property owner Richard Kinzalow are the Cumberland Trail State Park, the Land Trust for Tennessee and the Cumberland Trail Conference.

Tricia King, Southeast region project manager of land trust for Tennessee, stressed that negotiations for both the easement and the purchase are very preliminary and nothing has been finalized.

“We’re at the very beginning of this process,” she said.

The property owner, Mr. Kinzalow, could not be reached for comment Friday.

Such a large acquisition likely will take more than the Heritage Fund’s $1 million grant, Ms. King said, “but we are very much excited about working toward the conservation of this key property.”

Cumberland Trail Conference General Manager Tony Hook said Thursday his group is looking to raise $750,000 toward the acquisition.

The property includes an area of the plateau called Roaring Creek, Ms. King said.

The Heritage Conservation Trust Fund Board also approved Thursday another $1.2 million in grants for four other land acquisition projects across the state, Ms. Heise said. Altogether, the five projects would help protect more than 4,600 acres with an estimated value of more than $9 million, she said.

The state’s fiscal crisis, which prompted Gov. Phil Bredesen to announce budget cutbacks and possible layoffs of state employees, meant there was no money appropriated to the Heritage Conservation Trust Fund for fiscal 2009, Ms. Heise said.

The Heritage Conservation Trust Fund board went into Thursday's meeting with a fund balance of almost $5.5 million, based on unused dollars from previous years’ appropriations and interest earned from that money, she said.

“The board approved grants totaling $2.2 million yesterday, leaving just more than $3 million remaining,” she said.

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