The Nature Conservancy has purchased Sunken Meadow Pond, a manmade body of water in Surry County that separates a network of four freshwater springs from the James River.

It’s the latest development in a plan to demolish a 100-plus-year-old dam to restore wetlands.

The nonprofit environmental group, which last year proposed the wetlands project, said in an April 7 news release that it had acquired nearly 700 acres from Davey Resource Group Inc., the pond’s owner since 2023.

TNC told the Times in January that land surveying would begin in the next few months and that detailed plans and permitting would take several more months after that, with the actual dam removal likely occurring in 2026 at the earliest.

“This acquisition marks the beginning of many months of assessments and discussions with the community around the best approach to potentially restore this land to support flooding resilience and improved water quality for the community, along with benefits to native wildlife. Sunken Meadow is a beautiful place, and we want to help it remain a valuable ecological resource far into the future,” said Karen Johnson, director of wetland and stream mitigation for TNC, in the news release.

“Our next steps are focused on community outreach and engagement,” TNC spokeswoman Ann Nallo told the Times.

Nallo said TNC paid fair market value for the land. According to Surry Circuit Court Clerk Thomas Mayes, the sale occurred on April 1 and was recorded on April 9, listing a $3.6 million purchase price for three parcels totaling just over 678 acres.

County real estate tax assessment records show a sale price of $3.4 million when the three parcels were last sold to Davey on April 17, 2023.

The project has encountered opposition from residents of Sunken Meadow Road, which borders the pond, and from officials with the nearby town of Claremont who worry it will come at the expense of otters, bald eagles and other freshwater wildlife that have made Sunken Meadow Pond their home, and the picturesque view that led many of the area’s human inhabitants to build their house on the narrow strip of land between the pond and the James River.

TNC says the dam is in poor condition and has restricted the flow of 21 miles of stream habitat since the early 1900s. Claremont Mayor Daryl Graham contends the dam to be even older, dating to prior to 1880. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality further lists the pond’s water quality as “impaired” by bacteria and low dissolved oxygen.

The demolishing of the dam would be completed in partnership with an Army Corps of Engineers and DEQ-approved mitigation program, TNC’s news release states. Sunken Meadow would be TNC’s 145th mitigation project in Virginia.

The Nature Conservancy undertook a similar initiative in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University in 2010 to demolish the dam separating the formerly 70-acre Lake Charles from the James and restore wetlands along what had been Kimages Creek in Charles City County.

The Corps of Engineers sent public notices to area residents last fall informing them of the then-proposed sale of the pond and the plan to demolish the dam. According to that notice, TNC, as sponsor of the Sunken Meadow Pond project, would generate 176 non-tidal wetland credits. When developers are unable to avoid wetlands impacts in the area they’re developing, they’re allowed under Virginia law to compensate for the impact by purchasing credits sold by an environmental organization doing restoration work in another area.

TNC says that while the goal of the project is conservation, not the creation of wetlands credits, the organization has successfully used this funding mechanism to conserve more than 20,000 acres across Virginia, nearly half of which are now protected public lands.