Conservation Easements and Deed Restrictions on Data Center Land

Zoning can be changed by a vote. A recorded restriction is different: it is a property right or covenant written into the land records that binds every future owner. Three kinds come up most often when screening land for a data center, and they behave very differently.

A conservation easement is a type of easement that the owner sells or donates to a land trust or government body, giving up development rights while keeping title. An agricultural preservation easement is the same tool aimed at keeping land in farming. A private deed restriction (also called a restrictive covenant) is a promise in a deed or declaration, often imposed by a seller or an industrial park developer. An environmental covenant records the activity and use limitations that a cleanup depends on.⁹

All four should appear as exceptions in the title commitment. Our guide to title review and ALTA surveys explains how to read that schedule, and the guide to mineral rights and easements covers utility and access easements.

Most conservation easements are drafted to satisfy federal tax rules, and those rules are strict. Under the Treasury regulation for qualified conservation contributions, the conservation purpose must be protected in perpetuity. If an unexpected change in surrounding conditions later makes continued conservation use impossible or impractical, the easement can be extinguished only by a judicial proceeding, and the holder must receive a proportionate share of the proceeds from any later sale and use it for conservation.¹

Those terms leave little room for a negotiated release. A land trust that simply sold a perpetual easement back to an owner for a data center would be acting against the deed, its tax-exempt mission and the donor’s deduction. Even where an easement was purchased rather than donated, the deed and the funding program usually impose the same permanence.²

The scale is not small. The Land Trust Alliance’s 2020 census reported 61 million acres conserved by land trusts, more than 15 million acres above the 2010 figure, and that count does not include easements held only by government agencies.⁶ Much of that land is rural farmland and forest near the transmission lines and gas pipelines that data center developers look for.

Preservation is also a competing use. In Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, a farmer who received data center offers of more than $15 million for two farms instead sold the development rights on 261 acres for about $2 million. The deal closed on December 30, 2025, and the land is now restricted to farming in perpetuity.¹⁰

Most states and many counties run purchase of development rights programs that buy agricultural easements with public money. USDA’s Agricultural Conservation Easement Program helps fund these purchases: its Agricultural Land Easements component pays eligible partners (tribes, state and local governments and nonprofits with farmland protection programs) to buy easements that limit nonagricultural uses of cropland and grassland. The owner keeps title but must follow the easement’s land use requirements.²

Local money matters too. Silver Spring Township in Pennsylvania dedicates part of its earned income tax to farmland, forest and open space protection under a 2013 referendum, and it paid the full appraised easement value plus $2,500 per acre in the Cumberland County deal. Lancaster Farmland Trust, which holds that easement, typically pays about 35% of appraised easement value.¹⁰ Programs like these are often most active exactly where development pressure is highest.

Signs that a parcel may carry a preservation easement:

• A recorded “deed of agricultural conservation easement” or “deed of easement” naming a county board, state foundation or land trust as grantee.
• County agricultural preservation maps or land trust maps showing the tract as protected.
• A sale price or assessment well below nearby unrestricted land.
• Adjacent farms enrolled in an agricultural district or preservation area, which can signal local opposition to conversion even where the tract itself is free.

Do not confuse preservation easements with agricultural tax status or short-term federal conservation contracts, which can usually be ended with a payback. Our guides to rollback taxes and converting farmland to a data center cover those.

Sometimes, but the paths are narrow and slow. The Uniform Conservation Easement Act, adopted in many states, says a conservation easement may be released, modified or terminated in the same manner as other easements, but scholars note that much about amending and terminating perpetual easements remains unsettled and that tax-deductible easements face added limits.⁴

Courts may apply the doctrine of changed conditions, which allows modification or termination when the surrounding area has changed so much that the restriction can no longer serve its original purpose. In conservation practice, economic change, such as a rise in land value, is generally not considered enough.³

Maryland shows how rare termination is. The Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation held its first-ever termination hearing in 2012, on easements it had acquired more than 25 years earlier.¹² Its statute requires county approval, a majority vote of the Foundation’s at-large members and approval by the Secretary of Agriculture and the State Treasurer.¹³

For a data center buyer, the timeline and uncertainty usually mean the tract should be treated as unavailable unless an attorney with local conservation experience sees a realistic path.

Even if the campus avoids eased land, its new transmission line, substation tap or gas lateral may not. Virginia is the clearest example. The Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which holds open-space easements statewide, told federal regulators that building and operating the Atlantic Coast Pipeline across its easements would be a “conversion” under Va. Code § 10.1-1704, which requires the foundation’s approval and substitute land.¹⁴

At a University of Virginia law symposium on proposed power lines, one speaker argued that large steel transmission towers are likely to violate both the terms and the purpose of a conservation easement, and noted that open-space easements held by a public body under Virginia’s Open-Space Land Act cannot be condemned by another state entity or a public utility.¹⁵ That is one expert’s reading, not a court ruling, but it shows why line routes bend around eased land and why that can add miles and time to interconnection.

When screening, map eased parcels between the site and the nearest substation, not just on the site. Our guide to eminent domain and transmission easements explains how utilities acquire corridors.

Private restrictions are more common and usually more negotiable. A prior owner, a railroad, a utility or an industrial park may have recorded limits on use, height, outdoor storage, noise or density. Title insurers group these as covenants, conditions and restrictions, and the standard endorsement language singles out recorded instruments that also give a right of re-entry, a possibility of reverter or a right of forfeiture if the restrictions are violated.⁵

A reverter is the dangerous one. If a deed says the land reverts when used for anything other than, say, agriculture or a specific industry, a data center could forfeit title. The ALTA 9 series of title endorsements insures against loss from present violations of enforceable covenants and from forfeiture or reverter caused by violations, subject to the form, the state version and the Schedule B exceptions.⁵

Brownfield and former industrial sites often carry environmental covenants. Under the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act, “activity and use limitations” are restrictions or obligations created with respect to real property, and a compliant covenant runs with the land and binds later owners.⁹¹⁶ Typical limits bar groundwater use, residential use or excavation in capped areas. They rarely prohibit a data center outright, but they can control where foundations, ponds and utility trenches go. See brownfield cleanup and liability protections.

1. 01Order a title commitment early, with copies of every recorded exception document, not just the list.
2. 02Search county and land trust preservation maps for the tract and for parcels along likely power and gas routes.
3. 03Read each restriction for permitted uses, height and impervious cover limits, reverter or forfeiture language, and who can enforce it.⁵
4. 04For a conservation or preservation easement, assume the land is unavailable unless counsel identifies a statutory termination path and the holder is willing.¹⁷
5. 05For an environmental covenant, get the remedy documents and ask the agency what changes it would approve.⁹
6. 06Ask the title insurer which ALTA 9 coverage it will issue and on what conditions.⁵

Restrictions also shrink buildable acreage when they cover only part of a tract. If you want an outside read on whether recorded limits leave a workable site, you can get a site reviewed.