Brad Wyche, Founder and Executive Director, Upstate Forever

February 11, 2015

UpstateBizSC:
Talk about your professional journey leading up to the formation of Upstate Forever.

Brad Wyche:
I’m a native of Greenville and other than going to school and working one year in Washington, D.C., I’ve lived in Greenville my whole life. My father called me a “professional student” during my 20s because I loved being in school; I went to college, then grad school and then law school.

My first job was with a law firm in Washington, but I always planned on coming back to Greenville. In 1979, I returned home and joined the family law firm, concentrating in the environmental field. In 1998, I decided to leave the law practice to start Upstate Forever. We celebrated our 15^th anniversary last year. It’s been quite a journey and a very rewarding one.

UpstateBizSC:
What is Upstate Forever and how did you get the name?

Brad Wyche:
Upstate Forever is a membership-based nonprofit organization that promotes sensible growth and protects special places in the ten county Upstate region of South Carolina. We have three basic programs of work: Land Trust, Clean Air and Water, and Sustainable Communities. We have a pretty good website: www.upstateforever.org, which explains the goals of our three programs, describes our current projects and initiatives, and provides a lot of information on important issues facing our region. So I encourage your readers to check it out.

When I was starting the organization I knew about two conservation programs called “Florida Forever” and “York County Forever” in South Carolina. That’s where the name came from. I love the term “forever” because it succinctly captures what we’re all about. We want the Upstate to remain an environmentally and economically prosperous region forever.

UpstateBizSC:
Why did you decide to leave your law firm and start a non-profit organization?

Brad Wyche:
Two main reasons: While I enjoyed being a lawyer for many years, by the mid-1990s the job was no longer satisfying. Second, I felt there was a real need for an organization like Upstate Forever. We didn’t have a land trust program for our region, and there was no serious discussion about how to address the challenge of growth.

UpstateBizSC:
What are some of your accomplishments?

Brad Wyche:
We have a list on our website called “Greatest Hits: 1998-2014.” It’s a summary of the accomplishments that we’re especially proud of.

UpstateBizC:
Tell us about a few of the hits.

Brad Wyche:
Our very first project was the Swamp Rabbit Trail in Greenville County. Shortly after I left the law firm, I became aware of this extraordinary opportunity to acquire the old rail line between Greenville and Travelers Rest and convert it into a trail. After many years of hard work by Upstate Forever and several other partners, the trail became a reality and is now a spectacular success. In only its second year of operation, the trail had over 400,000 users. It has completely transformed Travelers Rest and has dramatically boosted the profits of businesses along and near the trail. Right now we’re working with several partners on extending the trail from Cleveland Park to CU-ICAR.

Last year we launched a Bikeshare program in the City of Greenville and will be adding two more stations later this year.

We’re proud of our main office building in Greenville. We took this old house that hadn’t been occupied for over 20 years and undertook a model green renovation project. We’ve got energy-efficient windows, spray foam insulation, recycled carpet, wheat and sunflower bookshelves, permeable pavement, solar hot water, solar panels, sun tunnels, rain barrels, native plant landscaping, dual flush toilets, a roof of sustainably harvested yellow pine, and a green roof. We received LEED Platinum certification, the highest level possible, and we’re one of only four platinum projects in the whole state. We have an open door—anyone interested in green design and building is welcome to visit our office at 507 Pettigru Street and see what we’ve done.

In our land trust program we work with property owners to protect important lands and resources in our region. We recently signed our 95^th conservation easement and now protect over 18,000 acres of some of the Upstate’s most special places, such as Stumphouse Mountain in Oconee County, lands along Scenic Highway 11 in Greenville and Pickens Counties, Greenspace of Fairview in Spartanburg County, and beautiful farmlands in Anderson and Abbeville Counties.

We’ve also worked hard to improve the condition of Lake Greenwood, the Saluda River and the Reedy River. We convinced the state environmental agency to impose, for the first time, limits on the amount of phosphorus being discharged into the Saluda River from several wastewater plants. This will pay big water quality dividends for the river and Lake Greenwood. In Greenville County, we successfully advocated for the approval of an innovative, market-based program that gives incentives to developers to construct water-friendly projects and provides funds to the county to address stormwater problems.

We’ve also been engaged with Twelve Mile River, working with our partners to remove PCB contaminated sediments from the river and to dismantle two old dams. The river is free-flowing again for the first time in 100 years and is now deemed safe for all recreational uses.

On the growth issue, we obtained a grant that allowed the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson to model what the Upstate will look like if we keep growing the way we have been. It’s a very scary projection, showing an increase in the amount of urbanized land by over 1.5 million acres by 2030. An additional 300,000 people will live here in the next 20 to 25 years. Our challenge—one of the greatest challenges our region has ever faced—is how to accommodate this population growth: where are these people going to live and work, how are they going to get around, and where are their kids going to go to school? How can we keep growing but not become a mess like Atlanta or Houston? We don’t want our beautiful Upstate, one of the most special regions in the world, to become a place with massive environmental and economic problems. The fiscal impact of sprawl is often overlooked but is huge because it’s incredibly expensive to provide services—police, fire, transportation, sewer, water, and schools—to a population that is widely dispersed across a region. We’re trying to convince elected officials and citizens that there’s a better way to grow, a way that is both fiscally and environmentally responsible.

UpstateBizSC:
How do we control sprawl and growth?

Brad Wyche:
The good news is that by being smart and strategic about development, we can accommodate this increase in population without greatly expanding the urban footprint. The basic goal is to use much less land to accommodate population growth. According to the Strom Thurmond Institute study, if we continue our current pattern of development, each new person will consume 2.5 acres of land. That will mean massive sprawl. If you grow in a more compact manner, each extra person would require only a half-acre, and I would submit that’s still plenty of space for a person. Achieving that smaller footprint will dramatically change the type of region we become—it would keep us from becoming another Atlanta.

UpstateBizSC:
Define land conservation.

Brad Wyche:
Land conservation is the protection of special places through either public acquisition or the use of conservation easements. The easement is one of the most effective tools we have for conservation—there’s no transfer of ownership, but the easement ensures that the land basically stays the way it is forever. The conservation easement “runs with the land,” meaning it is applicable to both the current owner and all future owners of the property. There are significant tax incentives to landowners for using conservation easements to protect their properties. We have a “land trust outreach” initiative that is focused on getting the word out to landowners about easements—we explain what an easement is, how it works, the potential tax incentives and so forth. We want to make sure landowners know it’s an option they should at least consider. We’re always glad to meet with landowners, and many of the owners who’ve already protected their properties with easements are also willing to speak to them—these owners are the best messengers.

We have criteria that we use to identify areas within the Upstate that we consider “special” and suitable for conservation. Some of the categories are properties in the South Carolina mountains, properties greater than 100 acres in size, and properties that adjoin our rivers and lakes.

UpstateBizSC:
Is Upstate Forever making progress against sprawl?

Brad Wyche:
I would say we’ve won a lot of important battles, but we’re still losing the war. The pattern of growth in the Upstate is still very land consumptive and sprawling. Several studies have been done that clearly show our region is in serious trouble. A Clemson study a couple of years ago found that from 1992 to 2010 we lost over 700,000 acres of our forest cover in the Upstate. Smart Growth America recently released a national study ranking the Upstate as the eighth most sprawling region in the United States. In a similar study done 10 years ago, we were ranked fifth, right behind Atlanta. Even more bad news is the growth study for the entire Southeast that was just released. It concludes that unless development patterns change significantly, the entire area between Raleigh and Atlanta will become a massive nightmare of sprawl by the middle of this century, and the Upstate will be swallowed up in it. But again this isn’t inevitable. We can keep this from happening—we can determine our own destiny.

UpstateBizSC:

Specifically, how?

Brad Wyche:

We urgently need land use policies that are truly transformative and that can fundamentally change the pattern of growth. Four policies are especially important.

One is to define areas where the services and infrastructure that attract development—mainly roads, water, sewer and schools—are provided. This is a highly effective way to manage growth and reduce burdens on taxpayers.

The second policy involves transferring development rights from areas where you don’t want to grow, such as in the mountains, to areas where you do want to grow, such as our existing urban centers.

The third one is zoning which is the traditional regulatory policy that basically determines “what goes where.” The ten County Councils in the Upstate could adopt zoning next week that would keep the awful predictions in these studies from coming true. But I’m enough of a realist to know that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Zoning is bitterly opposed by many citizens across the Upstate—the attitude that “no one is going to tell me what to do with my property” is still strongly held in our region. It’s the reason that about 80% of the entire Upstate has no zoning at all. But there are huge misunderstandings about zoning, and we devote a lot of effort in trying to explain what it is and what it isn’t. It isn’t about telling you what color you have to paint your house. It is about achieving the vision you have for your community, county or region.

The final policy is dedicated funding for conservation at the county level—what we call local conservation banks. A landowner considering a conservation easement knows that the fair market value of his or her property will decline significantly as a result of the easement. The tax incentives can offset some of this loss in value but for many landowners they’re not enough to make the deal happen. If you put funding on the table, that can change everything and now the deal makes sense to the landowner. In the Upstate, the only source of funding that we have for conservation is at the state level—the South Carolina Conservation Bank. It’s a wonderful program, and we’ve relied heavily on it. But the State can’t do it alone. The Upstate counties need to step up and do their part, like they’ve done in Richland, Charleston and Beaufort Counties. Oconee County is the first Upstate county to adopt a conservation bank, but they haven’t yet funded it.

UpstateBizSC:

Speaking of funding, how is Upstate Forever funded?

Brad Wyche:

We have three main sources of funding. First are our members who provide significant financial support for our work. Anyone can become a member of Upstate Forever by joining at whatever level works for them, and the contribution is tax deductible. Actually the members control the organization because they elect the Board of Directors at our Annual Meeting in November. Our staff can’t do everything and be everywhere so a large part of our work is devoted to educating our members about important issues and projects and encouraging them to get involved in their own communities. We also host five or six field trips for our members each year, giving them the opportunity to see and learn about some of the amazing places and resources we have in the Upstate.

Grants are our second source of funding. Most of these are restricted to one of our three programs or to specific projects within one of the programs. We will always seek—and hopefully continue to obtain—these grants, but our long-term strategy is to become less dependent on them by increasing our levels of unrestricted funds. Our members and sponsors are the main sources of those funds.

Special events are our third major source. Our biggest event of the year is our ForeverGreen Awards Luncheon in February. We also have an event that features the sale of nature-based art and the Preservation Ride, a bicycling event in northern Spartanburg County in September. We had a successful musical event earlier this year that I hope we can do again.

UpstateBizSC:

What books do you recommend about growth and conservation?

Brad Wyche:

A classic is Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, one of the best and most inspiring books ever written on conservation.

A book that made a big difference for me is Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution by Amory and Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken. There’s a misperception that environmental improvement is incompatible with economic prosperity, and this book is the best thing I’ve ever seen that completely refutes that myth. We can have it both ways. We say that all the time at Upstate Forever.