The Chattahoochee Regional Greenway System is the interconnected area of potentially permanently preserved greenspace between the sustainable villages and throughout the 40,000 acre area.
While the village locations were generally identified by the community in public meetings, details on individual land parcels within the CHC area are critical in order to appropriately plan development and protect fragile watershed and habitat.
The intent of the Regional Greenway project is to connect existing greenspace (county, state and private parks) by creating greenspace corridors. By ranking the parcels within the CHC area in terms of importance for conservation purposes, we are prioritizing them in terms of overall community benefit.
The land is being evaluated in terms of its significance as:
1) Viable agricultural land (active production or pasture)
2) Watershed protection, including riparian buffers and wetlands, and
3) Key scenic parcels, including those with vernacular architecture and historical or cultural significance.
Once prioritized, we hope the properties with the highest overall community benefit will be preserved first. This will be accomplished through a variety of conservation tools, including transfer of development rights, fee-simple purchase by conservation buyers, inclusion in the Federal Farm and Ranch Protection program, and other conservation programs. The first step in the process is data collection and prioritization of all the land parcels within the 60,000 acre expanded CHC area. We have undertaken this process with the assistance of the Geographic Information Systems Center at Georgia Tech.
The GIS map database of the 40,000 acre Chattahoochee Hill Country Overlay district (including topographic and property ownership maps) has been created by Georgia Tech with funding from a State of Georgia Department of Community Affairs Grant to Fulton County and the Turner Foundation.
Additional expansion of the database to include data on 20,000 acres of adjoining land in Carroll, Douglas and Coweta Counties has been supported with funds from the Community Foundation and donations to Friends of CHC.
This interactive database allows us to map a property and analyze its priority within the overall Hill Country plan. The resulting detailed map of environmentally sensitive (and as yet undeveloped) land is being used the develop a detailed green space connectivity plan that will dovetail with the CHCA Overlay District adopted unanimously by the Fulton County Commission.