[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 23, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H660-H661]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             IT IS NOT ABOUT SPRAWL BUT ABOUT HOW WE BUILD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, yesterday there appeared an article in 
The New York Times entitled, ``There's Plenty of Space for Suburbs to 
Keep Sprawling''. This article, I feel, represents a wrong turn in the 
discussion about our communities and how to make them more livable. The 
facts are true but beside the point.
  It is true that we have only increased the amount of developed land 
in this condition by two-tenths of a percent in recent years. It is 
true that we have a great deal of farmland. It is true that we are 
protecting more open space around the country. But I think it is 
important for us to take a deep breath, step back, and look at what 
those facts represent.
  To suggest somehow that we do not have a problem in terms of 
development in this country because we have a large inventory of land 
is a lot like suggesting that just because the earth is 78 percent 
water we do not have problems of water supply and quality. The fact is 
for much of the world, and many places in the United States, we often 
have too much water or we do not have enough or it is too polluted or 
sometimes we have a combination of all three of those problems.
  As it relates to the quantity of farmland, the fact is that we have 
generated this farmland in the past in ways that we are probably not 
likely to do in the future: filling in wetlands, irrigating the desert, 
destroying forest lands. Many of these practices today we now recognize 
are harmful. We no longer do it and, in fact, there is a very real 
question whether or not that is sustainable in the future, particularly 
given the lack of water supply in many parts of the country.
  It is also true that while we have added to the inventory of publicly 
protected forests and park lands, that is simply a reaction to the fact 
that we have more and more of this space imperiled. The good Lord is 
not making more forests and open space. We are having increasing 
pressure on those areas that we have now, and so we have taken this 
extraordinary step of trying to buy and protect more and more of it. 
That is not adding to the inventory. That is trying to just simply hold 
on to what we have.
  We need to look no further than the jewels of our national park 
system, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone, to see that we are 
severely under assault. Even in the Pacific Northwest, in my home area, 
the Mt. Hood National Forest and the Columbia River Gorge are subjected 
to problems of pollution, overcrowding, traffic congestion and 
development encroachment. It is an indication of the problems that we 
need to face in the future.
  It is also suggested that government intervention has been part of 
the problem in the past, to which I say: Amen. But the question is, how 
are we going to proceed from this point? Even if sprawl were possible 
to sustain into the

[[Page H661]]

future, is this the pattern of development that we want for our 
country? Do we want to live this way?

                             {time}   1245

  Increasingly, Americans from coast to coast, border to border are 
speaking out and suggesting that is not their desired approach. 
Citizens are taking matters into their own hands on State and local 
levels with initiatives to try and improve the quality of life. They 
know that there are better ways of spending our tax dollars, that just 
because we have failed in the past in comprehensive planning is no 
suggestion that we should not try and do a better job of planning in 
the future, and just because the government has not always been 
constructive in efforts that it has undertaken does not mean that there 
is not a role for the government to be a constructive partner in the 
future.
  It does us no good to pretend that we do not have problems of growth 
and quality of life in our communities. The citizens know that that is 
the case. The evidence is overwhelming. Now is the opportunity for us, 
under the banner of making our communities more livable, to engage the 
government as a constructive partner, to plan thoughtfully for the 
future involving our communities, spending our infrastructure dollars 
more wisely and engaging in a new generation of environmental 
protection that is performance driven.
  I look forward to the day when we can get away from the wrong turns 
of this debate and get back to a productive discussion of how we can 
work together to make our communities more livable.

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