Open warfare has broken out again between the Sierra Club and the National Association of Home Builders over the issue of sprawl.
The environmentalist group went on the attack early this month with “Sprawl Report 2000.”
In it, the Sierra Club argues that sprawl is the result of more than five decades of subsidies funded by American taxpayers.
These subsidies include billions of dollars spent on road construction and tax breaks that encourage businesses to move to the outskirts of towns.
“The biggest federal contribution to sprawl is the billions of dollars spent on building new roads,” the Sierra Club said. “This massive network of roads has . . . reshaped the landscape by opening up rural areas to suburban development, and it has reshaped our society by making the car king.”
“Travel by car has become not just another option,” the Sierra Club said. “In too many places, it has become the only option.”
The Sierra Club report said sprawl was also a product of state and local decisions.
The “game” that state and local politicians play to entice corporations to their areas “encourages commercial development far from cities and towns,” the group said.
“Over the past few decades, corporations have become increasingly skilled at playing one community against another in an effort to wrest greater perks from state and local governments,” the Sierra Club said. “Big-box retailers and isolated business parks are unwittingly subsidized by our own tax dollars.”
The Sierra Club directed its most withering criticism toward home builders.
“Sprawl subsidies are also built into the development process itself,” the group said. “Most new, sprawling development costs more to build and service than the taxes or fees it generates.”
When residential or commercial developments are built outside communities, roads, sewer systems and water lines have to be built, according to the Sierra Club. As those developments expand, they require schools and emergency services.
“Where does the money for all this come from?” the Sierra Club report asks. “In most cases, neither the developers nor the new residents pay their full, fair share. It is the rest of us who make up the difference.
“The bottom line is that new development is costing us money,” the environmental group said.
In response, Robert Mitchell, president of the National Association of Home Builders, said the Sierra Club’s report “ignores the challenges of meeting this nation’s demand for housing.”
“Over the next 10 years, some 15 million new homes will be needed to meet the demand created by the formation of new families as the nation’s children grow into adulthood and by immigration,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said that Americans needed to plan for this demand for housing and to “provide the necessary infrastructure in a way that creates and maintains healthy communities and makes housing affordable” to everyone.
In response to the charge that builders and new residents do not pay their fair share of development costs, Mitchell said that “forcing additional charges on new residents just to discourage growth” would make housing less affordable.
“New housing does make a significant financial contribution to local communities,” Mitchell said. Property taxes, for example, represent less than half the economic contribution made to local government from the construction and use of a new home.
“New residents pay for services in many ways,” he said. “They pay first because their new house costs more as a result of impact fees and hookup fees. Additionally, they make regular payments for water, sewer and other services they receive. They also pay for services in the form of significant annual property taxes.”
The Sierra Club said that “roads are the lifeblood of sprawl.” In its report, the environmental group argued that the high cost of building roads crowded out other transportation options.
“When driving becomes the only choice, residents must drive for every chore,” the group said. “This leads to gridlocked traffic, frustrated drivers and calls for bigger roads.
“But it’s impossible to build our way out of this mess,” the Sierra Club said. “New lanes and new roads act like magnets for new traffic, encouraging more people to drive more miles.”
While Mitchell did not dispute the Sierra Club’s argument about traffic congestion, he did say that “to suggest that we should spend a lot more on public transportation and a lot less on new and improved roads ignores a reality of life in this country–that Americans want the private auto to be their primary source of transportation.”
In its report, the Sierra Club said that anticipated federal funding for 1998 through 2004 would be $173 billion on highways and $41 billion on public transportation, a ratio of 4.2 to 1.
Mitchell said those figures “seem stark until you realize that the ratio of Americans who use their car for transportation to those who use mass transit is more than 12 to 1.”
“The reality is that we spend far too little to expand and improve roads and highways,” Mitchell said.
While Mitchell said that the Sierra Club report “painted an unrealistically gloomy picture,” the conclusions of the group’s report appear to do the opposite.
“The vast majority of Americans want clean, safe, livable communities,” the group said. “Yet many fear that we are powerless to slow sprawl.”
“The good news is that there are solutions,” the Sierra Club said. “There are many ways to rein in out-of-control development.”
“Sprawl is the fruit of 50 years of government subsidies,” the environmentalists said. “Cutting these subsidies will not just save us billions of dollars. It will save habitats and green space, lead to cleaner air and water, and revitalize our towns, cities and suburbs.”
