Protecting Our Water Through Better Land Use Years later, as I worked my way through Florida State
University, I routinely traveled from Tallahassee to Hialeah, Florida.
During those trips I saw the richness of the Everglades ecosystem give
way to a vast network of four lane highways, subdivisions and shopping
centers. In the years that followed, I watched as this great American
watershed was weakened, cut back and almost destroyed. It brings me such sadness to think that we wasted billions of dollars, threatened a great aquatic system and irretrievably lost a great portion of a national treasure, all because we did not understand that what we do to the land so greatly impacts our water. It frustrates me even more to realize that, as recent events so clearly illustrate, we still have not learned that lesson – or perhaps, we just are not paying attention to it. Just look at the sediment plume that formed in the Chesapeake Bay after Hurricane Ivan’s torrential downpour. NASA’s Terra satellite captured the torrent of sediment, debris, and pollution that washed from the land into the Susquehanna River, and then into the Chesapeake Bay. That is the view from miles up above the waterline. My wife, Jennifer, and our two and a half year old daughter, Bri, live on the shores of the Chesapeake. We saw the impact just feet away. The thick brown sediment that blocked out the bottom sands just inches below, the floating logs and construction debris that made boating unsafe for weeks, the debris, trash and pollution that washed up on our beaches, and the stench of suffocated fish and aquatic life – this was the view from sea level. Whether you look at it from miles above or from our bayside porch, the message is the same. Our land use policies are destroying our waters. It is not just the great waterways like the Susquehanna River or the Chesapeake Bay that are struggling. It is not just the aftermath of a great storm like Ivan. We see the same decline and neglect in the Patuxent River. This waterway once handled great warships, tobacco traders and, shamefully, even slave ships. Today much of it can barely be crossed by canoe because of silting. The Potomac River regularly runs brown with construction runoff from northern Virginia. The Anacostia, The Nation’s Capitol River, is an embarrassment of pollution and sediment runoff from the booming Maryland suburbs. From the smallest tributaries to the greatest waterways all across America, these scenes have become the norm. We must change our land use policies. We must understand that how we use our land determines the state of our water. It is about trees, forests, natural drainage areas and buffers that absorb rainfall, and filter impurities. It is about asphalt, impervious surfaces and never ending silting and pollution. It has become clear that controlling point source pollution, reducing auto emissions, reducing storm water runoff, and dozens of other important water improvement tactics will not work unless we also change the land use policies that cause more damage to water and watersheds than any other single factor. That is why I, and my colleagues at Smart Growth America, seek to alter land use policies across the country. We seek to stop sprawling, haphazard development, to make our existing communities more livable and fun. We seek mass transit alternatives to more and more superhighways and congestion. We seek equity in housing choices. We seek jobs where people are, not in remote office parks, accessible only by the automobile. One reason development has spread to every remote corner of our states is that the development playing field has been tilted – intentionally or inadvertently – to support, even subsidize sprawl. Federal programs from mortgage guarantees to the Interstate Highway System made this possible. To these were added thousands of federal, state and local initiatives that made it cheaper and easier to build “out there somewhere” than to invest in our existing communities. Over the last century people have moved outward from our cities, to our suburbs, and then as those suburbs age, from the older suburbs to the newer suburbs, abandoning each area as they moved further and further out. In the process of moving out, we took our natural resources for granted – as if they were unlimited. We took our communities for granted too, wantonly tearing them down or simply abandoning them. Our growth patterns have been destroying the beauty of our states, leaving large parts of our cities boarded up and abandoned, making congestion worse, and forcing our citizens to pay higher and higher taxes to cover the infrastructure costs created by sprawl. As these costs of sprawl continue to climb, many people are recognizing that we must better plan for growth. Smart growth is about redirecting our economic energy back into our existing communities. It is about changing the rules, the regulations and the tax structure to encourage infill development and reuse of abandoned buildings instead of more sprawl. We must stop subsidizing sprawl. Instead let us put in place a system of incentives to reinvest in our existing communities and to preserve our open spaces and natural areas. During my terms as governor we put in place the nation’s first comprehensive smart growth program and aggressively moved to protect our open space and natural areas. Using a variety of new and existing land preservation programs – the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP), Open Space, Rural Legacy and Greenprint – we were able to protect permanently nearly 400,000 acres of land during eight years in office. This is about one-quarter of all the land ever protected in Maryland. In fact, for the last five years of my administration, Maryland permanently preserved more land than was lost to development. Just imagine the brighter future we could have if we would do that nationwide. The end of our sprawl and the protection of our natural areas are essential if our hard working Baykeepers, Riverkeepers and Waterkeepers are to succeed. Without a fundamental change in land use policy in this country, we will continue to see the deterioration of the Everglades, the Susquehanna River, the Chesapeake Bay and our water resources all over this country and the world, the dedication of Waterkeepers notwithstanding. We must all become advocates for change in land use. I started this essay with a personal remembrance, and I will close the loop by finishing with a personal hope for the future. My son Raymond, now 25 and fighting for progressive causes across the Country, grew up enjoying the great bounty and fun of the Chesapeake Bay and her tributaries. Fishing on the lower Potomac, trotline crabbing on the Patuxent, trolling for Rockfish, or catching trout on light tackle at the base of the pilings of the Bay Bridge – this is how we spent many weekends and a good part of our summers. I now have a beautiful daughter, who is almost three years old, and I hope to spend the same wonderful time with her on the water. However, I fear that, if we do not change our land use policies, she will never be able to experience the rich and beautiful Chesapeake Bay that I enjoyed with my son Raymond. The Bay will be almost barren and the few remaining fish and crabs will have toxin levels too dangerous to eat. Even as I write, the American Rivers organization just released a report that identified the Susquehanna – the source of half of the Bay’s water – as the single most endangered river in the United States. For my children, Raymond and Bri, and for all the children of America and the world, we must do better. We can start to do better by recognizing one vital fact: what happens to the water starts on the land. |