The Navy, Trust for Public Land (TPL) and NW Rangeland reached a mutually beneficial agreement with Madison Ranches Inc., recently that supports working agricultural lands, preserves water rights, and protects military flight paths.
Madison Ranches is a fourth-generation family farm located in Echo, which is in close proximity to Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility (NWSTF) in Boardman.
All of the interested parties reached the agreement, called a restrictive use easement, through the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) program. The REPI program gives DOD organizations the ability to collaborate with local conservation organizations to purchase restrictive easements with landowners near military facilities as a way to protect military missions by helping to remove or avoid land-use conflicts and to promote conservation.
Under this restrictive easement, the Navy and its partners agreed to provide Madison Ranches Inc. with approximately $4.7 million dollars for more than 3,300 acres of agricultural land. This is the first benchmark agreement in the region promoting the protection of the military mission and conservation values.
Under the agreement, Madison agreed not to build structures in military flight paths. For the Navy, and by extension Oregon’s National Guard Bureau, a key aspect is the agreement prevents obstructions into low-level flight paths.
Jake Madison, president of Madison Ranches, told the Navy in a letter dated May 30, that they found the REPI process a mutually beneficial way to avoid conflicts. The Navy is sensitive to the placement of obstructions given flight safety concerns and wanted to protect the airspace around NWSTF.
In a statement, Madison said, “We would also like to offer our strong support of the program and it’s continued funding. For the first time in four generations, Madison Ranches had the opportunity to secure ownership in a large community water development project. This project ensures water will continue to flow on Madison Ranch lands and will increase our irrigated acreage base and crop rotation. We have also been able to vertically integrate into an onion-packing shed. It’s not a stretch at all to say that a lot of Navy personnel across the nation are going to be eating Madison Ranches grown onions that the REPI program helped make possible. We are just one example. For our region, the impact that the REPI program will have on local farms to continue to be generationally viable is invaluable to our rural economy.”
The REPI program is supported by Sen. Ron Wyden as detailed in a letter from February thanking “the U.S. Navy for being a good neighbor and supporting landowners in Eastern Oregon through the REPI Program.”
