Gallup Poll: Americans Worry More About Water Than Warming
Gallup Poll: Americans Worry More About Water Than Warming
The American public is most worried about polluted drinking water, although concerns about global warming concerns have grown over the past two years, and are now at their highest level ever, according to the most recent nationwide Gallup poll on attitudes towards the environment.
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,009 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted March 11-14. Pollsters asked people if they personally worry a great deal, a fair amount, only a little, or not at all about 10 environmental problems.
A majority of those polled say they worry ‘a great deal’ about four different environment problems involving water – 58 percent are concerned about pollution of drinking water; 53 percent worry about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs; 52 percent are concerned about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste; and 51 percent worry about the maintenance of the nation’s supply of fresh water for household needs.
At least four in 10 respondents say they worry a great deal about air pollution (46 percent), damage to the earth’s ozone layer (43 percent), the loss of tropical rain forests (43 percent), and global warming (41 percent).
Thirty-nine percent of those surveyed worry about the extinction of plant and animal species. Only 25 percent of Americans worry a great deal about acid rain.
Analyzing the poll results, Gallup’s Joseph Carroll says, ‘Overall, Americans’ concern about global warming has not generally shown much fluctuation since Gallup first asked the question in 1989. Still, concerns about global warming are up slightly this year and are at their highest level recorded by Gallup, albeit by only one percentage point.’
In 1989, roughly one in three Americans worried a great deal about global warming. This sentiment decreased in the mid-1990s, falling to as low as 24 percent in 1997. Then, concerns gradually increased over the next few years, reaching 40 percent in 2000 before dropping again during the earlier part of this decade.
But, worry has been on the rise again in the past two years, with about four in 10 Americans expressing a great deal of worry about the issue.
The poll found that Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to express concern about all of these environmental problems.
Youthography Poll: Government Should Do More for Environment
Youthography, which focuses on polling North America’s young people, found that 58.7 percent of Americans polled aged 14-29 believe that ‘the government should be doing more to protect the environment.’
In Youthography’s latest national Ping survey of more than 1,900 Americans aged 9-29, close to 75 percent said they believe the world will be more polluted in 25 years.
‘Younger generations have grown up with recycling and the notion of being green, and they’re experiencing the most dramatic effects of global warming we’ve seen,’ said Youthography Chief Strategic Officer Mike Farrell.
‘That, coupled with the fact that they feel the government has not taken a leadership role on the environment has left them with a feeling of ‘we need to do this, it’s our future at stake.’ This has brought many of them together, and they are starting to show some momentum as a powerful force. However, these attitudes have not reached a mainstream tipping point in terms of real effects on their actual behavior – yet,’ Farrell said.
Among those between 9-13, 68.8 percent of female participants gave top importance to ‘taking care of the environment,’ while 54.7 percent for males gave the issue top importance.
Of the 14-29 year-olds, the concept of ‘being environmentally friendly’ was rated of top importance by 54.5 percent females and 46.9 percent males.
While more than 90 percent of youth indicate a social cause is important to them, when making purchasing decisions, few are considering whether products are organic, or packaged with recycled materials.
Only 20 percent are worried about how the products they purchase are made and the impact that could have on the Earth.
When shopping, 27.3 percent of 14-29 year olds try to reduce the amount of items with packaging always or most of the time.
When it comes to recycling, all age groups are taking a more active part with close to half of young Americans polled ‘always’ or ‘almost always’ recycling newspapers, cans, bottles and plastics.
The Green Guilt Poll
The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation, RBRC, a nonprofit organization focused on rechargeable battery and cell phone recycling, commissioned a public opinion poll to find out where the environmental guilt lies in America.
The survey, which was conducted by GFK Custom Research on behalf of RBRC, reveals that 20 percent of Americans suffer from ‘green guilt,’ and many more admit to less-than-perfect recycling habits.
In fact, only about 52 percent of respondents recycle their glass and cardboard, while roughly 60 percent recycle their newspapers.
About one in every three of those surveyed recycle their used rechargeable batteries and old cell phones, while 14 percent of Americans admitted to not recycling anything at all.
Those who identified themselves as ‘recyclers’ say that the main reason they recycle is to help preserve the environment.
The 43 percent who do not recycle all recyclable items are unclear about their local recycling laws and recycling locations, while 34 percent of Americans feel that it takes too much effort to separate their trash.
Of those polled, 43 percent doubt that their individual actions will have any impact on the future of the environment.
‘We actually found the results of the survey encouraging since most Americans are at least recycling something and just need the proper resources and guidance to help them do more for the environment,’ said Ralph Millard, RBRC executive vice president. ‘RBRC’s Call2Recycle program can help them do just that since it is a free and convenient solution for individuals to recycle their used rechargeable batteries and old cell phones.’
Cell phones collected through the Call2Recycle program will be recycled or refurbished and resold when possible with a portion of the proceeds benefiting select charities.
The survey aimed to identify the one thing that could most easily be incorporated into consumers’ lifestyles in order to protect the environment. One in four respondents felt that they could easily turn off their air conditioning or heat when not at home, while 19 percent said that they could unplug appliances that are not in use.
Nearly 15 percent felt that the easiest habit to adopt would be recycling their used rechargeable batteries and old cell phones, whereas roughly 12 percent would rather bring a coffee mug to their local coffee shop, instead of using paper or Styrofoam cups.
But just as some habits are easy to adopt, others are hard to break. Nearly one-quarter of those surveyed admitted that they could never switch to cloth diapers from disposables, nor would they ever buy a hybrid car.
Who Cares? Care2 Poll Takes Pulse of Conscious Consumers
Care2, an online community of environmentally conscious consumers, polled 800 members of its six million member community to gauge perceptions and misperceptions on global warming and green living and how they affect political views and actions.
This poll found that 76 percent are adopting green living practices for both health and environmental reasons. Eighty-four percent are most interested in greening their homes, while 71 percent want to green their cars, and 61 percent want to green their offices.
Nearly half of those polled (48 percent) said cost is the main obstacle that keeps them from going green, while 35 percent said lack of knowledge about alternatives is an obstacle.
Care2 found that for 88 percent of respondents global warming is a ‘very significant’ issue, and 78 percent think they might be able to change the course of global warming.
Sixty-one percent of those polled think global warming will affect them and their families in a variety of ways, from weather and climate changes to diseases.
The pollsters found that 79 percent of those questioned said that global warming will affect their 2008 presidential votes.
The Green Party and Democrats were viewed as doing the best job of making global warming policy a priority. Democratic candidates most likely to make a difference on global warming are Barack Obama (26 percent), Hillary Clinton (24 percent) and John Edwards (20 percent), the survey found.
Care2 has launched the Internet’s first click-to-donate race to stop global warming. Visit the site http://stopglobalwarming.care2.com and click on one button, and Care2 will make a donation to pay for the removal of one pound of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Orbitz Poll: Majority Will Pay More for Eco-friendly Travel
A new survey by the online travel company Orbitz found that travelers are reassessing how they travel, where they stay and the impact they leave behind when on vacation.
The Orbitz poll was conducted online using MarketTool’s Zommerang panel of 320 adults ages 19-65, who are regular travelers.
Over two-thirds (67 percent) of those polled placed importance on the eco-friendliness of a destination, and 65 percent said it would somewhat impact their decision to stay at a hotel if they knew the hotel was using solar or wind energy to supplement the powering of the building.
A strong majority (63 percent) said they would pay a little more to rent a hybrid vehicle or stay at a green hotel.
More than half (52 percent) of Americans polled said they would be willing to donate a small portion of their vacation budget to help save the environment when booking a trip.
Although great strides have been made regarding eco-travel awareness,
Many of those polled said that destinations in the United States could be doing a better job when it comes to working to protect the environment. More than half believe that the tourism industry in the United States is not environmentally friendly.
‘As a responsible global business within the tourism industry, Orbitz is working to provide its customers with more eco-friendly travel information and choices,’ said Heather Leisman, senior director of merchandising for Orbitz. ‘Orbitz encourages our customers increase their awareness and consideration of the planet – whether sea kayaking in Alaska or cleaning up a beach in Key West.’
Celebrating 100th Anniversary of Rachel Carson
Contest Hopes to Raise Environmental Awareness
EPA and non-profit organizations are teaming up for the third year to sponsor a contest designed to increase environmental stewardship and public awareness of environmental issues. This year, the theme is commemorating the 100th anniversary of environmentalist Rachel Carson’s life.
It is an intergenerational photo, essay, and poetry contest that will be judged by the public. The contest’s intergenerational approach reflects Carson’s efforts through her writings to have adults share with children a sense of wonder about nature and help them discover its joys.
Entries must be joint projects involving a person under age 18 and a person 50 years of age or older and must be received by Friday, June 15. Finalists will be selected by a panel of judges. The public will then be asked to vote for their favorites in each category: photography, essay, and poetry. The winners will be announced in July. More information about the contest and its requirements is available on the Web.
Born on May 27, 1907, Carson is considered the founder of the contemporary environmental movement through her landmark book, Silent Spring. Its publication is credited with causing a reversal in the nation’s pesticide policy.
The contest is sponsored by the U.S. EPA Aging Initiative, Generations United and the Rachel Carson Council Inc.
More information about the contest: http://epa.gov/aging/resources/thesenseofwonder/index.htm
Drinking Water Week begins Sunday, May 6
Checking for Leaks Can Save Water
HARRISBURG (April 26) As a water conservation activity to support this week, PADEP is encouraging all homeowners to test their toilets to determine if they leak. Leaks can waste as much as 300 gallons of water a day without anyone noticing.
To find a leak, homeowners can add 10 drops of food coloring and wait about 30 minutes. If the water in the toilet bowl has even a hint of color, it indicates that the tank is leaking. A bad “flapper”, the circular object that covers the hole in the bottom of the tank, causes most leaks. Flappers are fairly easy to replace, and homeowners can buy one for less than $5 at a hardware store.
Homeowners may want to contact their water utility to see if they offer free audits to detect leaks or free pamphlets that instruct them about how to find and fix their own leaks. Repairing leaking toilets saves money and is a positive action consumers can take to protect this limited resource.
April 21 Earth Day Jam to benefit CCEEC
Leadership Carbon will be observing Earth Day on April 21 in a most unique way.
It will be raising funds for the Carbon County Environmental Education Center.
The 2007 Class of Leadership Carbon has assembled a concert featuring five bands which will be performing at Flagstaff Mountain Resort, with the concert being held from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.
The bands performing will be Bounty Hunter, Becky and the Beasts, Maury and Friends, Chief Brody, and The Three of Us. All are donating their services as a contribution to Earth Day and Leadership Carbon.
Tickets can be purchased from any member of Leadership Carbon, from the Carbon County Environmental Education Center in Summit Hill, Horizons Shop in Jim Thorpe, and Maury’s Music in Coaldale.
They also can be obtained on line by going to www.carboneec.org/earthdayjam.html.
Read full story at tnonline.com
Two Sides to Every Coin
PA Environmental Council Names Sponsors for Governor’s Awards Dinner
The Event Will Honor Winners of the 2007 Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence in Harrisburg
HARRISBURG, Pa., April 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswireThe Pennsylvania Environmental Council today announced that the Dominion Foundation, Constellation Energy, InterPower/AHL Con and PPL will serve as sponsors for a dinner in Harrisburg on April 17 to honor the recipients of the 2007 Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence.
Pa. called a culprit in global warming: Only California and Texas produced more greenhouse gases in the U.S., group says.
The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania (April 13, 2007)
Apr. 13–Pennsylvania created more carbon dioxide emissions than all but two other states in 2004, making it “a big part of the global warming problem,” according to an environmental advocacy group.
The Keystone State was behind only Texas and California in giving off fumes considered the primary contributor to climate change, according to PennEnvironment, which issued a report Thursday on nationwide carbon emission trends between 1990 and 2004.
Emissions from coal-burning power plants and automobiles are the main culprits, the group says.
Master Well Owner Network Training Available – May 12th
Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment is conducting a Master Well Owner Network volunteer training in State College, PA on Saturday, May 12, 2007. Any interested PA resident can apply to the program and attend this workshop. This workshop is free and lunch is included, but travel to State College will not be reimbursed.
The deadline for applications is April 13th. More information and an online application can be found at http://mwon.cas.psu.edu/ or contact Stephanie S. Clemens at mwon@psu.edu or 814-865-2250.
Recycling for electronics announced for April 13-14 in East Penn
The recycling center for April 13 and 14 will be at the Lehighton public works building. Some of the things that will be accepted are VCRs, stereos, monitors, towers, printers, keyboards, scanners, circuit boards and more.
From the Times News
By ELSA KERSCHNERekerschnertnonline.com
April 4, 2007
http://www.tnonline.com/node/143263
“Filling Holes”… The Springdale Pit
Sarah Fulton and Matt Lewis of Post Sputnik Film and Video Production (www.postsputnik.com) have produced a documentary entitled “Filling Holes”. It’s about an abandonded mine pit (Springdale Pit) in the Pennsylvania coal region that is going to be filled with tons of dirt dredged from the bottom of the New York and Philadelphia harbors. The doc deals with the economic and enviornmental aspects of the plan, as well as its impact on the local communities receiving the harbor dredge. It is scheduled to air on WVIA (the PBS station for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton) at 7 p.m. May 21.
Fed agency focuses on rare disease in Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties
Fed agency focuses on rare disease
BY SHAWN A. HESSINGER
TAMAQUA BUREAU CHIEF
shessinger@republicanherald.com
03/10/2007
A federal agency has interviewed 51 patients who claim to have contracted a rare blood disorder in the region and say the state Department of Health’s cancer registry lists 97 total diagnosed with the disease since 2001.
Vince Seaman, toxicologist with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said his agency still hopes to talk with more people diagnosed with polycythemia vera, a rare disease characterized with production of excess red blood cells.
He said data, including voluntary blood samples, would help determine the agency’s next step.
Hometown resident Joseph Murphy has been among community volunteers supplying data to the investigators and said he hopes the attention will raise awareness of the issue.
Murphy said Seaman, now circulating a toll-free number (1-866-448-0242) for those willing to be interviewed, has already received many calls and will continue interviews at least through the end of March.
“And a lot of them are people who moved out of the area and were diagnosed with it later,” Murphy said.
Seaman said the federal agency, originally created to assess potential health risks near federal Superfund sites, became interested in interviewing residents because of what appears to be an unusually high incidence of the disease locally.
Frequency of polycythemia vera, which became reportable to cancer registries in 2001, is estimated to be 1 in 100,000, Seaman said.
Investigators have examined an area including Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties.
Because this area’s population is estimated at 500,000, it might be expected to see five cases per year or 25 cases over five years instead of the 97 cases reported from 2001-05, the only period from which data is currently available.
Murphy and other residents have suggested a correlation between polycythemia vera, other local health disorders and past industrial practices that have included illegal toxic dumping.
However, Seaman said no documented cause for the disorder has yet been determined, making it hard to draw such connections between the disease and the environment.
“So the data we’re collecting will be important,” he said.
Caused by a genetic mutation, Seaman said the disease is known not to be inherited but certain factors may predispose an individual.
Seaman said he is hopeful exhaustive investigation into the possible exposures of residents who have contracted the disease may prove valuable when a cause for the affliction is determined.
©The REPUBLICAN & Herald 2007
Ten Things Wrong With Sprawl
Reprinted with permission.
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3641
COMMENTARY: Ten Things Wrong With Sprawl
By James M. McElfish, Jr.
E/The Environmental Magazine
In just the next 34 years, the Census Bureau tells us, we 300 million Americans will be joined by another 92 million.(1) Where will all these people—mostly us and our direct descendants—live, work, play, worship, buy, sell, and serve? Where will 40 million additional households be located? What sort of built environment will we produce, and what will be the results for the nation’s and the environment’s well-being?
The prevailing form of land development is popularly known as sprawl or exurban sprawl.(2) Sprawl is characterized by low-density development that rigorously separates residential uses from other land uses, and that relies entirely or almost entirely on automobile transportation to connect the separate uses. There are strong reasons to prefer that the nation’s future development does not reproduce this pattern—reasons that have nothing to do with the price or availability of gasoline.
Urban planning professor Jonathan Barnett, in his book The Fractured Metropolis, charges sprawl with over-consumption of resources, risks to the natural environment, and loss of community resulting from the time demands imposed by the physical separation of commercial, business, residential, and social land uses.(3) Economic critics of sprawl emphasize the high costs of duplicated infrastructure, the cost of time devoted to delays in commuting, and the distortions resulting from the mismatch between initial economic benefits of construction in sprawl areas and the costs of meeting subsequent demands for services (schools, roads, fire and police) by these same areas.(4)
On environmental grounds, opponents of sprawl decry the rising amount of land conversion per each unit of new development (more acres per person), the paving over of some of the nation’s highest quality farmland, and losses of biological diversity and open space.(5) Sprawl enthusiasts counter that people are getting what they want in low density housing and ubiquitous shopping, that a rising population will need more housing on cheap land, and that commute times, while rising, are not that bad for most people. They emphasize the number of construction jobs created and the higher assessed land value of developed lands over agricultural and forest lands.(6) Sprawl enthusiasts downplay the agricultural land issue by suggesting that America still has large areas of land suitable or at least potentially suitable for agriculture (there is no “food shortage”), while further noting that the direct contribution of agriculture to the nation’s gross domestic product is modest in comparison with other economic sectors.(7)
Many of these arguments talk past one another. For example, well-paying construction jobs need not depend upon future construction in sprawl patterns rather than in alternative forms of development. Ninety-two million more people will need somewhere to live and work and go to school, after all. Likewise, the arguments over agricultural lands are not really about whether food will run out, or even whether commercial retail buildings generate more net economic value than crop lands (a hotly disputed topic, by the way), but rather whether the location of agriculture, forests, retail and housing matters.
Arguments about traffic and travel times often gloss over whether alternative development patterns and transportation options can deliver comparable flexibility with fewer side effects. Whatever one thinks of these arguments and their critique of past practices and the current built landscape, at least when considered prospectively, sprawl has 10 undeniably adverse effects that should place it on the public policy agenda:
1. Sprawl development contributes to a loss of support for public facilities and public amenities.
In economic terms, sprawl encourages market failure; residents of sprawl communities have access to public facilities that they do not support with their tax dollars, and residents of older communities subsidize the existence of the these facilities. Sprawl communities typically lack parks, museums, civic spaces, libraries, and the like. This frequently occurs either because some of these amenities are privatized and made available only to a small segment (owners of large lots have less need for public open space), or because sprawl dwellers can be “free riders” on urban facilities supported in substantial part by others. Pittsburgh city officials have noted, for example, that their city’s land base includes substantial tax exempt properties—museums, universities, parks, hospitals, libraries, zoos—far in excess of those in suburban jurisdictions whose citizens can enjoy city facilities while also benefiting from lower suburban tax rates.(8) In many communities, property taxes in the exurbs are lower than those in the cities because of this mismatch.
2. Sprawl undermines effective maintenance of existing infrastructure.
Existing developed areas—cities and older suburbs—have sewers, water systems, city streets, bridges, schools, transit systems and other hard infrastructure to maintain. But exurban development draws population away from areas with existing infrastructure and into new areas where new infrastructure must be constructed or where some infrastructure costs are avoided, at least temporarily, through the use of wells and septic systems, or by reliance on undersized roads that are upgraded at great public expense long after the developments have been constructed. The frequent result is a shift of population regionally, leading to a decline in the urban and older suburban tax base. This decline in turn prompts increases in urban taxes and rates (needed to support the existing infrastructure across a smaller population), and/or to deferral of maintenance activities. Both of these effects further disadvantage the existing systems and encourage further exodus. John Fregonese, the Region 2040 lead planner for Portland’s Metro government makes this point, “When you have sprawl, all your resources are sucked to the edge for new roads, and schools and sewers. Then you have a lack of money for rebuilding…and you get these rotting cores.”(10)
3. Sprawl increases societal costs for transportation.
Costs rise largely because of the need for expensive retrofits. Typical scenarios include the conversion, after sprawl has occurred, of exurban two lane roads to four lanes or six lanes, adding signals, construction of grade separations for intersections, and building county or inter-county connector highways and metropolitan belt roads. This invariably occurs at great expense and disruption—because of increased right-of-way costs, difficulties in maintaining traffic flow during the construction period, and often substantial community opposition. This retrofit dilemma is a spin-off of the problem of traffic. People hate traffic—in fact, part of the reason for sprawl is the elusive promise that commuters and commercial offices can outrun traffic by continually expanding into lower traffic areas. And, at least initially, average commute times are generally lower within sprawl areas than commutes from sprawl areas to the center city. But traffic is, in general, extremely bad in sprawling metropolitan areas—often worse on weekends when travel is more diffuse and timing strategies intended to avoid peak travel times do not work. Catch-up transportation expenditures have to be made.(11) Unfortunately, often they can’t be made. For example, consider the sprawl area north of Chicago. Like many suburban papers, the local newspaper in Lake County, Illinois, has a daily “roads” column. A fairly typical letter printed in the column bemoaned the dai
ly backups at the intersection of a heavily traveled two-lane road with a four-lane highway. The Illinois DOT spokesman contacted by the paper responded that the intersection complained of had been completely upgraded and reengineered only a few years earlier. It had already been overtaken by increased traffic flow. The spokesman commented that there was no remaining engineering or right-of-way expansion solution on this road, so the only thing that IDOT could do would be new re-construction projects on parallel routes. The retrofit problem is a perennial feature of sprawl, as any sprawl dweller can personally attest, and its costs are high.
4. Sprawl consumes more resources than other development patterns.
Because homes, offices, utilities, and other features are farther apart (requiring more asphalt, more lengths of pipe, more conduits, more wires), because each commercial and institutional structure requires its own acres of parking, and because much of the utility infrastructure is duplicative of the “stranded” infrastructure in nearby older communities —society’s overall consumption of metal, concrete, asphalt, and energy is higher.(12)
5. Sprawl separates urban poor people from jobs.
Ownership of an automobile and the resources to maintain it are essential for work in the suburbs, the site of most new jobs in the modern economy. However, the prevailing sprawl model of development drastically separates different price levels of housing from one another, as well as separating job areas from residential areas. These characteristics of sprawl mean that locating new affordable homes near jobs is quite difficult, and sprawl consequently reduces the availability of jobs for those in urban areas that lack reliable automobile transportation.(13) Overcoming sprawl patterns could result in either increasing the number of workplaces in urban areas, or making it easier to construct and maintain the availability of affordable housing near workplaces.
6. Sprawl imposes a tax on time.
Sprawl development requires that we spend more time on the road. Exurbia, including most post-war suburbia, rigorously separates residential housing, food stores, other retail establishments, warehouse and transfer facilities, industry, schools, and office buildings. This has adverse effects on neighborhoods, and leads to more automobile travel. In exurban areas, commercial establishments can be accessed only when people drive to each location. Nonwork automobile trips now comprise more than 80 percent of all daily trips.(14) Residents of sprawl areas do not forego the benefits of mixed uses of land, but they pay a price in time, and they lack choice in their mode of travel. Describing Tyson’s Corner outside Washington, D.C., where offices and commercial buildings are completely separate from any residential housing and all access is via main arterial roads, a Washington Post writer noted that “a six-mile commute home can stretch to 90 minutes.”(15) Sprawl also makes it take much longer for the one-third of Americans who reside in central cities and inner ring suburbs(16) to get to greenfields areas for recreation and enjoyment. Sprawl, in effect, imposes a hidden tax on time by making certain amenities more remote and harder to reach.
7. Sprawl degrades water and air quality.
Sprawl development is hard on streams, wetlands, and runoff quality. It reduces the resilience of streams and other waters by degrading headwaters and impoverishing habitat. For example, in the Chesapeake Bay region, sprawl is the largest threat to water quality. It increases the area of impervious surface, decreases retention time for rainwater and diminishes its infiltration into the soil and water table, and it leads to rapid erosion and structural degradation of streams and rivers, which therefore receive runoff in much greater volumes in a shorter period of time.(17) It also increases the frequency and intensity of flooding, placing further demands on the public treasury for preventive structures and disaster response.(18) In metropolitan areas, air pollution can be worse over a much larger area. Vehicle miles traveled as well as time sitting in traffic rises significantly in these mega-sprawl areas; for example, motorists in the Atlanta area log about 100 million miles per day with 2.5 million registered vehicles.(19) Another effect related to sprawl development patterns is the loss of a constituency that can be served by transit or other means. Residents’ inability to substitute other modes for the automobile, including walking and transit, is an undeniable drag on every area’s ability to meet clean air goals.(20)
8. Sprawl results in the permanent alteration or destruction of habitats.
Sprawl development converts large areas to asphalt, concrete, and structures, altering the landscape hydrology and reducing the biological productivity and habitat value of the land.(21) While any conversion of open lands to developed uses can impair the prior environmental values, sprawl development does so at a high rate of land conversion per unit of development.(22) A related problem is the loss of productive farmland near metropolitan areas. This feature of sprawl development has been documented by the American Farmland Trust through repeated studies under the rubric of Farming on the Edge.(23) Farmland contributes at least incidentally to wildlife habitat and potential for future restoration. Although there is, at least in the near term, no threat to the nation’s total food production given the amount of remaining farmland, as well as farmland currently fallowed under federal conservation, the loss of prime farmland is not desirable in the long term. Conversion of land near urban areas also presents an environmental loss in the sense that dense urbanization places stresses on habitat and aquatic systems that can best be offset by the beneficial effects of retaining larger tracts of nearby vegetated open space in the same watershed and habitat areas. Without this open space (farms, forests), metropolitan areas and their adverse environmental effects are unbuffered.
9. Sprawl creates difficulty in maintaining community.
People do have communities in their suburban neighborhoods, workplaces, and in their organized activities. Modern day exurbs are not the places of alienation described by some “new urbanist” writers, many of whom draw upon affection for the older urban neighborhoods of the early and mid-20th century.(24) But these new sprawl communities require more driving, and more complicated arrangements to maintain social connections. This also means that children are at the mercy of scheduled activities and “play dates” rather than neighborhood interactions, and exercise becomes an isolated activity on the schedule, rather than a natural consequence of walking, biking, or using public park facilities. These demands exact a social toll. Planner William Fulton recently described the effect of sprawl in the greater Los Angeles area as “a constant caravan between the residential cocoon, where citizenship is exercised only in narrow, self-interested ways, and the spending and working cocoons, where citizenship is totally surrendered to the commercial forces that run the place.”(25)
10. Sprawl offers the promise of choice while delivering more of the same.
In America, choice is not only a cherished value, it is also something that our market economy claims as its highest achievement. But, paradoxically, we have lost choice in our system of development. Sprawl constrains our choices. If you want a new house, you can have one on a half acre in the suburbs with no retail around. If you want to locate a store or an office, the arterial strip or highway interchange is for you. If yo
u want transportation, you can use your car. If you are poor you can live in substandard housing in the inner city or manufactured housing on the farthest fringes of the metropolitan area. This lack of choice is why every part of exurban America resembles every other part.
Portions of the building industry sometimes say that our current development patterns perfectly reflect the satisfaction of American social demands. Whatever we have, whatever we are creating, it must be what we want, or the market would provide something else. However, this position requires us to deny the influence of laws, institutions, zoning codes, financing rules, government subsidies and market failures. Much of the sprawl we see is the unintended result of laws and policies that were imperfectly aimed at something else, such as easing transportation delays, encouraging school modernization, providing healthy settings for housing, or stimulating home ownership. We will only be able to address these mismatches of law and policy, and to root out perverse unintended consequences, if we recognize that something is amiss with our current patterns of development. Some things really are wrong with sprawl. “We need to find a better word,” said a builder representative to a program on smart growth in which I participated a few years ago. Well, that’s one approach. But a better approach is recognizing that we have real problems ahead if current development patterns continue to prevail. Only such recognition will enable us to take steps to reform the laws and policies that hold us back—and enable us to find places and provide choices for our 92 million new neighbors.
JAMES M. MCELFISH, JR. is director of the Sustainable Use of Land Program at the Environmental Law Institute, (202)939-3800, www.eli.org. ELI’s Sustainable Use of Land Program and its projects are supported by the Heinz Endowments, the William Penn Foundation, the Keith Campbell Foundation, the Abell Foundation, Douglas Keare, and others. The Institute is solely responsible for the content of this publication. For more than three decades, the Environmental Law Institute has played a pivotal role in shaping the fields of environmental law, management, and policy domestically and abroad. Today, ELI is an internationally recognized, independent research and education center.
Notes:
(1) http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/usinterimproj/ The projection for 2040 is 392 million. Current U.S. population is 300 million.
(2) Exurban means “outside the city.” It is a more accurate term for today’s sprawl areas than “suburban,” as many sprawl areas have little direct economic or social connection to the cities in whose regions they lie. Their job centers are not in downtowns but in other exurbs.
(3) Jonathan Barnett, The Fractured Metropolis (1995), pp. 6-7.
(4) Real Estate Research Corporation, The Costs of Sprawl: Environmental and Economic Costs of Alternative Residential Development Patterns at the Urban Fringe (1974); Sierra Club, Dark Side of the American Dream: The Costs and Consequences of Suburban Sprawl (September 9, 1998); James E. Frank, The Costs of Alternative Development Patterns: A Review of the Literature (Urban Land Institute, 1989); Clint Yuhfill, The Invisible Economics of Real Estate Development, (Pennsylvania Environmental Council 1994); Robert W. Burchell, et al., The Costs of Sprawl-Revisited: Transit Cooperative Research Program Report 39 (Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy Press, 1998).
(5) See e.g., American Farmland Trust, Farming on the Edge (1997)(America is rapidly losing high quality farmland to development); Reid Ewing and John Kostyack, Endangered by Sprawl: How Runaway Development Threatens America’s Wildlife (National Wildlife Federation, Smart Growth America, Nature Serve: Washington, DC: 2005)(sprawl is fragmenting and degrading habitat).
(6) See e.g., Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson, “Are Compact Cities a Desirable Planning Goal?” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 63, No. 1, Winter 1997; Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson, “Critiquing Sprawl’s Critics,” Policy Analysis (Cato Institute, Jan. 24, 2000); Randall G. Holcombe, “In Defense of Urban Sprawl,” PERC Reports, February, 1999. Roberta Maynard, “The Ripple Effect,” Builder magazine, July 1998 (“Each new home build in America is like a mighty economic engine…”). Of course, developed lands also usually require substantial municipal services, and the net economic outcome from a municipal finance point of view is often negative. See American Farmland Trust, Living on the Edge: Costs and Risks of Scatter Development.
(7) Samuel R. Staley, The Sprawling of America: In Defense of the Dynamic City (Reason Public Policy Institute, Policy Study No. 251, 1999)(“Urban development does not threaten the nation’s food supply”), Gordon and Richardson, supra, n. 6 (“America is not running out of open space.” And “Detailed economic data suggest that the direct contribution of agriculture to the nation’s economy is modest” in contrast with manufacturing and other uses of the land.)
(8) See, e.g., Timothy McNulty, “Tax-exempt properties are killing city financially, controller Flaherty says,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 13, 2000.
(9) William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles (Solano Press Books: Point Arena, California, 1997).
(10) Dee Hall, “The Choice: High Density or Urban Sprawl – Portland Area Gets Creative to Control Growth, Wisconsin State Journal, July 23, 1995.
(11) D Schrank & T. Lomax, The 2005 Urban Mobility Report (Texas Transportation Institute, 2005) (constructed road capacity must increase faster than increases in travel if increases in congestion delays are to be prevented, but this has not occurred in the 85 metropolitan areas studied; indeed only four had a narrow gap).
(12) Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Liveable Communities, Energy & Smart Growth: It’s About How and Where We Build (2004)
(13) The research confirming this effect is summarized in Margaret Pugh, Barriers to Work: The Spatial Divide Between Jobs and Welfare Recipients in Metropolitan Areas (Brookings Institution, Sept. 1998). See also Robert Cervero et al., “Job Accessibiity as a Performance Indicator: An Analysis of Trends and Their Social Policy Implications in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Institute for Urban Regional Development, Univ. of Cal. at Berkeley (1997). The National Association of Home Builders argues that the job gap is a reason to support sprawl: build where the jobs are. “Sierra Club Report on Growth is Flawed and Biased, NAHB Says”, NAHB Press Release, Sept. 9, 1998.
(14) Surface Transportation Policy Project, High Mileage Moms (1999) (only 18 percent of automobile trips are commuting to work), available at http://www.transact.org/report.asp?id=184. (15) Alice Reid, “Tysons Growth Revs Up Concern About Gridlock,” Washington Post, March 13, 1999.
(16) Robert Puentes and David Warren, One-Fifth of America: A Comprehensive Guide to America’s First Suburbs (Brookings Institution, Feb. 2006), at 6.
(17) See e.g., Paul Nussbaum, “Paving way for environmental harm,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 9, 1999 (recounting water quality impacts of development in exurban areas surrounding Philadelphia). Dana Beach, Coastal Sprawl: The Effects of Urban Design on Aquatic Ecosystems in the United States (Pew Oceans Commission, 2002)(summarizing scientific research).
(18) Rutherford Platt, et al., Disasters and Democracy (Island Press, Washington, D.C. 1999).
(19) Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres, “Atlanta Megasprawl,” Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, vo. 14, no. 3, Fall 1999, p. 17, 19.
(20) Environmental Protection Agency, The Transportation and Environmental Impacts of Infill Versus Greenfield Development: A Comparative Case Study Analysis (Washington, D.C., 1998).
(21) Reid Ewing and John Kostyack,
Endangered by Sprawl: How Runaway Development Threatens America’s Wildlife (National Wildlife Federation, Smart Growth America, Nature Serve: Washington, DC: 2005); Bruce Stein, L.S. Kutner, J.S. Adams, Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States (Oxford U. Press: New York: 2000).
(22) See generally, James M. McElfish, Jr., Nature-Friendly Ordinances (Envtl. L. Inst. 2004). (23) American Farmland Trust, Farming on the Edge (1997).
(24) E.g. James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere (1993)(a well-written jeremiad including riffs on the alleged alienation of exurbia).
(25) William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles,” (Point Arena, California: Solano Press Books, 1997), pp. 343-344.