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Land Protection Program

The Skaneateles Lake Watershed Land Protection Program (SLWLPP) is a partnership between the City of Syracuse and Skaneateles Lake Watershed residents. The program is aimed at maintaining high water quality within the watershed by protecting the farmland, forests and other open spaces that act as natural buffers to the region’s streams, rivers and other waterways.

How does the program work?
The SLWLPP protects water quality by limiting the development of environmentally significant properties within the watershed. The program’s principal activity is to purchase permanent conservation easements from willing landowners. Conservation easements are voluntary legal agreements that restrict development and practices harmful to water quality.

How do the City of Syracuse, watershed communities and landowners benefit from the program?
By protecting the Skaneateles Lake watershed’s wetlands, forests and farms – nature’s water filters –the SLWLPP helps maintain high drinking water quality. Everyone who uses water from Skaneateles Lake – including lakeshore residents, the Town and Village of Skaneateles and the City of Syracuse –benefits from healthy drinking water.

The SLWLPP helps to protect the scenic, rural character of watershed communities. Working farms and forests, wetlands and other natural areas define the region and make it an attractive place to live and visit.

What lands will be eligible for the program?
The SLWLPP focuses its efforts on protecting environmentally significant properties with features that make them important for water quality protection, such as the size of the property, proximity to the City of Syracuse’s water intake pipes and hydrological significance of the property. Environmentally significant properties may include working farmland, managed forest properties or other natural areas. To date, the SLWLPP has closed, or is in contract to close, on nearly 650 acres of land within the watershed. Funding for two-thirds of the purchase costs have come from the City of Syracuse. On three special projects, the balance has been supplied by matching grant funds from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Federal Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program.

Program News:

11/3/06 – The Skaneateles Lake Watershed Land Protection Program (SLWLPP) is issuing a last call to property owners north of Hencoop Road on the west side of Skaneateles Lake and north of Collard Road on the east side of the Skaneateles Lake to express an interest in the SLWLPP.  After November 15, 2006, the program will begin working with interested landowners further to the south.  Available funding for this program is limited and could be fully committed as early as July 2007.