Partners - Teton County, Idaho
Media - Teton County, Idaho
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Kathy Borgen champions causes that help protect, care for, and nurture a love of our planet. She is also passionate about the work of the Institute
Where We Work Northern Rockies Teton County, Idaho
Reshaping Development Patterns in Teton County, Idaho
Teton County, Idaho; a stunning landscape of mountains, rivers, farms, and the small, highly-livable communities of Driggs, Victor, and Tetonia. The county is a crucial part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, containing critical wildlife habitat and corridors over both public and private lands.
In the 1990s, development began to spread into the foothills of the Teton and Big Hole mountain ranges, and the Teton River riparian corridor. This rural sprawl pattern of development degrades the Valley’s wildlife habitat, scenic vistas, farm and ranch lands, and water quality, as well as the fiscal health of the local government.
The Burden on Local Governments
Local governments are straining under the need to maintain infrastructure, plow roads and provide services to partially built subdivisions. The Sonoran Institute recently commissioned a fiscal impact study which shows that if homes were built on the county’s vacant lots, local taxpayers would have to greatly subsidize the costs to provide public services to them.
In addition to this study, we have already produced background reports and working papers on:
Collaborative Project Work
In partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Valley Advocates for Responsible Development (VARD), we will improve the siting and quality of development, mitigate the negative fiscal impact of scattered development, protect land values, and improve the health of our lands and natural resources.
Specifically, there are several projects that spearhead this initiative:
The Teton Creek Project aims to significantly reduce the number of platted lots, move remaining lots away from the creek corridor, and preserve land by conservation easement. In partnership with VARD , we have already made significant progress in redesigning the Targhee Hills Subdivision.
Our goals for this project include: replat the Targhee Hills subdivision from 120 to 20 lots; vacate the remainder of the Redtail subdivision removing 50 lots; reduce the number of lots in the Willows subdivision by two-thirds; purchase development rights on the Green property in order to place this property under conservation easement; and a re-watering of Teton Creek, with the ultimate goal to re-introduce native Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout.
The Teton Canyon Project provides a corridor between Idaho’s Big Hole Mountains and the Teton Mountains. The Sonoran Institute and VARD have a mapping effort underway to identify the most critical parts of the area that warrant the highest level of protection. With this information, this project will initiate the potential purchase and placing of conservation easements on specific subdivisions, such as Canyon Creek; a 2,458 acre subdivision with 454 lots and a lodge. This subdivision has owners who are willing to sell, and our overall goal is to return the Canyon Creek parcel to agriculture, with strong conservation management.
With nearly 7000 vacant lots in Teton, the county leads us to believe that there is much more potential for redesigning or extinguishing existing subdivisions. Our third project in this effort includes indentifying and pursuing further subdivision reshaping opportunities by gaining local knowledge, using technology to map high conservation areas, and working with subdivision owners & local government to help redesign their lots.
"This partnership effort in Teton County is... our first and leading local demonstration project for a West-wide effort to build the case – legal, financial, economic, social – for vacating or replatting poorly sited and poorly planned subdivisions. It’s an exciting project with implications for the southwestern portion of the Greater Yellowstone Region and for how land use planning and entitlement occurs throughout the West."
~ Luther Propst
News & Updates
Rural Idaho - 10 years later: Farms are Helping Rural Areas in Idaho Persevere
December 25, 2011 - Florence is one of thousands of rural Idahoans who have changed the way they live and work to adjust to the dramatic changes taking place in the past few decades. Ten years ago, the Idaho Statesman joined partners like the Spokesman Review in Spokane, the Post Register in Idaho Falls, the Lewiston Tribune and Idaho Public Television in a yearlong examination of Idaho’s troubled rural landscape. Read the full article here.
Sonoran Institute Awarded Grant to Reshape Development in Idaho
December 12, 2011 - The Cross Charitable Foundation has awarded a grant to the Sonoran Institute to setup a demonstration project focused on reshaping development patterns in Teton County, Idaho. Read the press release here.
Stories
Dancing with Zombies
September, 2010 – There are several million “zombie subdivisions” spread across the Intermountain West; subdivisions that are approved – but largely vacant. Teton County, Idaho finds itself at ground zero for zombie subdivisions. Click here to read Luther's Dispatch.