Online Conservation Easement Registry

By Kimberly Duplisea, InforME

The Maine State Planning Office (SPO) is pleased to announce the launch of the Online Conservation Easement Registry. The online registry allows any conservation easement holder to register their Maine based conservation easements with the SPO. The online service, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, was developed in partnership with InforME and can be accessed at https://www.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/spo/cer/index.pl.

Prior to the launch of the registry, the State did not have any formal tracking system for conservation easements. In 2007, the Maine Legislature enacted a new law to establish a mandatory statewide registry for all conservation easements held in Maine. All holders of conservation easements on real estate in Maine must register their easements and annually confirm the monitoring status of these easements. The online solution allows users to do this as well as serves as the official repository for the collected data.

The deadline for completing a registration this year is July 1, 2009. Beginning in 2010, the annual reporting deadline will be March 30. Based on the information provided by holders to the online system, the SPO will report annually to the Legislature on the status of the registry and on the level of conservation easement activity statewide.

For more information regarding conservation easements in Maine , please visit the SPO website at http://www.maine.gov/spo/lmf/ .

Article posted on: April 1, 2009
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