What IS a conservation district? 

Conservation districts are local governmental subdivisions, categorized as a 501c4, established under state law to carry out a program for the conservation, use and development of soil, water and related resources. 

Districts work with land managers, local government agencies and other local interests in addressing a broad spectrum of resource concerns:  erosion control, flood prevention, water conservation and use, wetlands, ground water, water quality and quantity, non-point source pollution, forest land protection, wildlife, recreation, waste water management and community development.  Such work varies according to the needs and resources of the districts.  There are over 3000 districts that cover 98 percent of the privately owned land in the fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.  Vermont is broken down into 14 districts.

The Lamoille County Natural Resources Conservation District was organized on October 5, 1945 under Acts of the 1939 Vermont Legislature in response to the Soil Conservation Act enacted by Congress in 1935. 

In the more than sixty years since the district was formed many changes have taken place.  The original Act named us the Lamoille County Soil Conservation District later changed to Soil and Water Conservation District, and later still changed to Natural Resource Conservation District.  Over time, the greatest change has been in land use.  The demand for the use of land for other than agricultural purposes has increased tremendously since the districts beginning.  As a result, we have experienced a shift in the demographics of our cooperators here in Lamoille County.  At our inception, all of our cooperators were agricultural producers.  In the past sixty years we’ve experienced a shift as our cooperators now include towns, villages, schools, businesses, private landowners and a decreasing number of agricultural producers.  Our mission clearly states that we want to assist Lamoille County in the land use transition we are currently experiencing at a growing rate. 

We believe the guiding factor used in making land use decisions should always be the capacity soil.  This factor is more critical now than it was sixty years ago because of the increased demand on each acre of soil.

LCNRCD is comprised of all the towns in Lamoille county which are Belvidere, Cambridge, Eden, Elmore, Hyde Park, Johnson, Morristown, Stowe, Waterville and Wolcott.  The ten towns of Lamoille County have a total acreage of 304,000 acres.