Town acquires one more farm to preserve

Warwick n Town Supervisor, Michael P. Sweeton, announced this week that the Town has acquired the development rights to another farm in Warwick, the 47-acre Don and Linda Weiss Farm located on Bowen Road. “This farm is a great acquisition for the Town, bringing the total acreage preserved from development by purchase of development rights to over 2,100 acres,” Sweeton said. The Warwick portion (47 acres) of this farm which stretches across into New Jersey (71 acres) is now preserved from development forever.” The cost of the development rights was $404,392, of which the county open-space fund contributed $189,280. “The Town of Warwick is grateful to the County for their support of our efforts,” Sweeton said. Sweet Water Farm, as it is fondly referred to by the Weiss couple, is a beef cattle operation with some land cropped for feed products. The farm has open hayfields, hardwood forest, hedgerow trees and horse pastures. This property also anchors the Western edge of protected ridgeline that surrounds the Village of Warwick watershed. “Aside from removing these acres from the sights of developers, the real beauty of acquisitions such as this and the other thirteen farms we’ve already acquired, is that these farms will remain as farms and will never be built upon. ” said Sweeton. In 2000, the people of Warwick authorized the Town to borrow $9.5 million to allow the Town to purchase land or to purchase development rights on land in an effort to save valuable open space for the enjoyment of all. “The Town has also actively pursued matching funds from County, State and Federal sources to augment the $9.5 million offered by Town taxpayers. The result is that we have increased that $9.5 million to more than $18 million, allowing us to purchase even more land and development rights and to preserve farming and other important features of our community,” Sweeton stressed. “And,” he added, “with the recent approval of the transfer tax to be charged to all new residents moving into the Town, we will have additional ongoing sources of funding to keep the project moving forward for years to come without having to go back to our existing taxpayers to pony up more money.”