(The Center Square) — U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Ted Budd, R-N.C., have introduced legislation that would help incentivize landowners to sell to the Department of Defense for its Readiness and Environment Protection Integration Program.
The Incentivizing REPI Sales Act would “exclude the appreciated land value from federal capital gains tax for landowners who sell land or property for the purposes of the program.”
The REPI program’s mission is to protect the effectiveness of military bases and installations, enabling them to conduct high-quality training and testing without encroachment from land development or the community, and vice versa. Often, this is done by purchasing easements and preserving or investing in their natural character—whether that’s farmland, wetlands or waterways—thereby making military installations more “resilient” to climate change.
“Building and maintaining resilient bases is crucial to our national security. I’ve long supported the Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program, which helps us do that while also promoting conservation of public lands and critical habitat,” Kaine said in a statement.
REPI brings together the military, other federal agencies, state and local governments and private conservation organizations to accomplish its purposes.
For example, the Conservation Fund, The Nature Conservancy, The Trust for Public Land, the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources have united to protect Virginia’s Fort Walker from “incompatible development and noise complaint issues.” The project is still ongoing, but 13,667 acres have been “protected, managed, or improved” through a total investment of $46.3 million.
Since the program began in 2003, the DOD has “protected over 1.2 million acres of land at 124 locations across 37 states and territories to preserve critical operational assets, infrastructure, and capabilities.”
