Here is an overview of what each state
is trying to do:
- New Jersey proposes a “watershed”
approach to limit future growth by controlling sewer and
runoff discharges. In turn there is a belief this will
control sewer connections and building permits. The state
proposes to control most growth to areas with reasonably
expandable or already permitted sewer discharge capacity. NJ
also has an extensive “Green Acres” program to buy
development rights and preserve certain land. NJ has a
moderate to high population growth rate, except in the
southwestern NJ area.
- PA has passed legislation to give
municipalities more planning and zoning regulatory power.
Municipalities are also allowed to assess more fees and
require developers to address offsite traffic issues.
Municipalities are also allowed to work together to zone
uses so that all municipalities do not have to have zones
for all uses. PA has started a grant program for certain
land preservation. Among the 50 states, PA’s population
growth rate is low to moderate, with the highest growth near
a few large cities.
The key issue causing the current need
for state governments to “do something” is rooted in decade
old decisions at the federal and state levels to:
- Subsidize transportation unequally.
- No longer build transportation
systems to meet traffic demand.
- Subsidize and promote suburban
commercial and housing growth.
Although it was thought, for about a
decade, that environmental laws could be used to get people
out of cars, such efforts were abandoned as too unworkable and
too politically controversial. Even “car pool only” laws on
I-80 in northern New Jersey had to be abandoned after the
public demanded the ability for all to use the lanes because
they paid for them.
Both State’s efforts to control growth
indirectly will not likely meet with success. Direct
approaches, by contrast, involving by buying development
rights or the land itself, is the only methods likely to meet
with success. Meanwhile, government should decide what it is
going to do to move people more efficiently between work and
home, and, by train or plane. As there is no population
control planned in the U.S., the states and federal government
need to face reality - clogged roads and airports with long
flight delays are going to mean more demands to “do
something”, and indirect measures to control growth will do
little to solve fundamental transportation capacity problems.
Government is really responsible for managing growth, and
having adequate infrastructure for the current and future
population. We think that population growth is a reality that
government really needs to better address because indirect
measures to control future growth do little to make current
problems to go away. In this time of economic growth in the
us, we should be focusing on more environmentally sound
projects to make our infrastructures work better, and not
unrealistically hope that localized growth problems near major
cities are can be controlled so the “problems” will go away.
We think using this approach, the problems will get worse.
- Gary Brown
