AIKEN — Aiken City Council gave initial approval July 13 to transferring 2,658 acres of forested land around the city’s Mason Branch Reservoir to the South Carolina Forestry Commission, potentially for the creation of a new state forest.
The Brunswick Tract, located north of Interstate 20 between U.S. Highway 1 and S.C. Highway 19, was purchased by the City of Aiken in 2020 to buffer its 406-acre reservoir. Together they form the Shaws Creek Preserve, which the city protected with a conservation easement in 2024.
In April, the council approved negotiating the transfer.
“If successful, Aiken will have a nearly 3,200-acre state forest publicly accessible in close proximity, with adjacent conservation land that would total more than 4,000 acres of interconnected conservation lands surrounding a key drinking water supply for us,” Peter Kleinhenz, executive director of the Aiken Land Conservancy, told the council. “That, to me, would be a win.”
Aiken City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh said there are “multiple benefits to this transfer, because ultimately the goal was to allow public access, and the Forestry Commission has greater experience and resources and capacity to manage this large amount of public lands and working forests of this size.”
He said 25% of revenue generated from the tract would go to the Aiken County Public School District.
Bedenbaugh said the city would seek cooperation with the Forestry Commission “in our efforts to ultimately construct a greenway that would run from Beverly D. Clyburn Generations Park to the property, and the inclusion of a restrictive covenant that requires the property to be maintained in perpetuity as a forest and remain open for public recreation.”
The protections would apply “to any future owners of the property and the land conservancy will continue to hold the conservation easement on the property, which also limits uses permitted on the property, restricts the percentage of impervious surfaces allowed, and other legally binding restrictions that will run with the property, ensuring that it remains preserved in perpetuity for the purposes of protecting water quality and providing passive public recreation,” Bedenbaugh said.
Kleinhenz said the property is connected to two other conservation easements and altogether total more than 3,500 acres of interconnected conservation land.
He said another opportunity for conservation “is the highly threatened Hilton tract, next door to this property. It's 549 acres with more than a mile of frontage on the Shaws Creek Preserve, and the Nature Conservancy, who are excellent partners, came in to help secure that piece.”
“They need a long-term owner of that land, which further highlights the benefit of the South Carolina Forestry Commission being involved, because the Forestry Commission has agreed to take that piece and add it to a potential state forest if this all goes through,” Kleinhenz said.
Having the Forestry Commission manage the tract “would reduce that burden for the city of Aiken, and it would bring a public state forest into being that's less than 17 minutes north of where we stand today, and five minutes north of I-20, right at an exit, with all the potential benefits that would come from that,” he said.
“The forestry commission provided assurance to me that this could happen, if approved, by May 2027,” Kleinhenz said.
He said the Aiken Land Conservancy “feels this is the best path forward that will achieve the desired goals of drinking water protection, habitat protection and management, long-term economic benefits to the community, and, most importantly, the facilitation of more land conservation within the Shaws Creek Basin moving forward.”