Land added to Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area

SUGAR HILL, Ga. (AP) Forty-seven acres of land have been added to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area outside Atlanta, according to a national land conservation group working to protect land for public use.

The San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land and the National Park Service on Tuesday announced details of the land acquisition.

The property along the Chattahoochee is in Sugar Hill, Georgia, about 35 miles northeast of Atlanta. The additional 47 acres will nearly complete an 8-mile corridor of conserved public land along the river, the Trust for Public Land said.

Protecting the land from development will give people more access to the river and the outdoors, said Curt Soper, the trust's Georgia state director.

``The Chattahoochee River NRA is a wildly popular outdoor destination for the more than three million people who visit each year,'' Soper said in a statement.

Bill Cox, superintendent of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, said in the statement that the land represents ``an extremely important addition to the park.''

``Purchasing property adjacent to the river is the single most important thing we can do to protect water quality in the Chattahoochee River,'' Cox said. ``Now that this critical property has been purchased, it also becomes possible to work with interested partners in developing a continuous greenway trail that can provide for recreation and increase the support for protecting this incredible resource we have here in metropolitan Atlanta.''

It's the second Chattahoochee River conservation project completed by the trust this month following a 133-acre addition to public lands near the river in Johns Creek.