alt Hacker News> Its owner, a nonprofit that supports a community of Benedictine monks, put it on the market earlier this year.
>The foundation put the property up for open auction in early February, meaning there was no minimum or maximum bid, she said. It accepted the offer the state made under the bill that passed.
>The listing worried fans of the natural wonder. But at the tail end of the legislative session this month, a bipartisan group of lawmakers stepped in and approved $2.1 million to buy the falls and its surrounding land.
Zero chance this wasn't arranged in some capacity off record. The state doesn't "just" buy waterfalls without such plans being tacitly agreed to beforehand or at least deemed viable by people who "know things".
Replies
Drat! I was going to buy this and put the entrance to my secret lair behind the waterfall. I would have gotten away with it too if not for those darn kids!
One of the rare times where I’m probably kind of ok with it
Probably they had been trying to sell it to the state for months/years/decades, and nothing had happened, so they escalated. Here in California in east bay there are thousands of acres of land around Mt. Diablo that are held by a non profit trust because the state/parks department is too lazy to aquire it/don't have funds to manage it. The privately owned/managed land around Mt. Diablo is roughly equal in size to the state park it surrounds.