Study evaluates effects of city sprawl

Washington, DC, Oct. 18 (ENS)— Sprawling metropolitan areas have higher traffic fatality rates, more traffic, and poorer air quality than less sprawling areas, a new study demonstrates.

The report, “Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact,” is based on a three year research project conducted by professors at Rutgers and Cornell universities.

Unlike previous studies, which attempted to evaluate sprawl based on one or two statistics such as density, “Measuring Sprawl” uses 22 variables to rate metro areas on four different aspects of their development. The scores for each factor indicate how badly those regions have sprawled in terms of spreading out housing and population; segregating homes from the activities of daily life; lacking the focus of strong economic and social centers; and building poorly connected street networks.

The study breaks new ground by going beyond the index to demonstrate how sprawl development patterns affect the way people live.

“For the first time we are able to define sprawl objectively so we can see how it measures up,” said Don Chen, executive director of the coalition Smart Growth America. “What this study tells us is that sprawl has a direct and negative impact on our everyday lives.”
Among the report’s findings:

• More driving: The daily distance driven per person is over 10 miles more in the most sprawling places than in the least sprawling, adding up to 40 more miles of automobile travel each day for a family of four.
  
• More traffic deaths: The 10 most sprawling places average 36 traffic deaths for every 100,000 people, while the least sprawling average 23 deaths per 100,000.
  
• More air pollution: Ozone pollution levels are as much as 41 parts per billion higher in the most sprawling areas, which can mean the difference between safe, “code green” air quality and “code red” air quality.
  

In addition, the research found sprawl to lack even the one benefit defenders most often attribute to it: lower congestion. People in sprawling areas endure no less traffic related delay than those in more compact places, but have fewer alternatives in travel routes and modes, the study found.

The report ranks 83 metropolitan areas, accounting for almost half the country’s population, and finds that Riverside-San Bernardino California is the most sprawling overall. It is followed by Greensboro and Raleigh, both in North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; and West Palm Beach, Florida.

The most sprawling metropolitan area in terms of low density housing is Knoxville, Tennessee; the place with the poorest mix of homes, jobs, and shops is Raleigh; the place with the weakest centers of activities such as town centers is Vallejo-Fairfield-Napa, California, and the place with the most poorly connected street network is Rochester, New York.

“This research reaffirms that strengthening existing cities and inner suburbs with new and more compact growth, and improving the mix of homes, jobs and daily activities, are among the best ways to counter uncontrolled sprawl and improve environmental quality,” noted Lee Epstein, director of the Lands Program for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The full report is available at: <http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org>

ENVIRONMENT BRIEFS

New Zealand
plans carbon tax to meet Kyoto targets

New Zealand announced plans Oct. 17 for a carbon tax that will push up fuel costs but help the country meet targets under the Kyoto climate change agreement.

The tax of up to NZ$25 (US$12) per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent will be levied sometime after 2007, and only if the controversial Kyoto protocol comes into force internationally. It would raise retail gas prices by up to six percent, and natural gas and electricity prices by eight to nine percent, government papers showed.

Big losers would be coal users, whose costs would jump 19 percent.

An as-yet unknown amount of cash raised by the new tax would be offset by cuts to other taxes. The 1997 Kyoto protocol, which New Zealand expects to ratify this year, requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by around five percent of 1990 levels on average between the first commitment period of 2008-12. However, the United States, the world’s biggest polluter, has refused to ratify the protocol.

New Zealand produces between 70 million to 90 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, ranking it the fourth largest per capita producer after the US, Australia, and Canada. About half of its greenhouse gases come from the methane and carbon dioxide emissions of more than 50 million sheep and cattle, from which products earn around one third of New Zealand’s export earnings.

Despite the US refusal, New Zealand expects the agreement to come into force after ratification by the Russian Federation, probably next year. (Reuters)

Protests at Nevada Test Site yield charges against 66

Protesters capped a weekend of demonstrations and arrests at the Nevada Test Site and the planned Yucca Mountain radioactive waste dump with a rally in Las Vegas claiming minority communities are disproportionately contaminated by federal nuclear facilities.

Officials said 66 pople were arrested or issued summonses Oct. 11-13, including some who refused to identify themselves and remained jailed in Nye County until the ACLU of Nevada intervened.

About 24 black, Hispanic, and American Indian demonstrators claimed increased rates of cancer, birth defects, and skin disorders in minority communities near nuclear facilities in South Carolina, Washington, New Mexico, and Nevada and a chemical plant in Mississippi.

Protests and rallies are common at the gate to the test site, about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Most of the 66 men and women were issued trespassing summonses at the gates to the test site.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the Energy Department, operates the test site, where 928 full-scale nuclear weapons tests were conducted from 1951 to 1992. (SFGate.com)

Kilimanjaro’s ice fields are melting

Once described by author Ernest Hemingway to be “as wide as all the world,” the ice fields atop Mount Kilmanjaro have now retreated to their lowest surface extent in the past 12,000 years and could vanish within the next two decades, new research suggests.

The findings, based on the first ever climate history of Africa using ice core analysis, are all the more troubling, scientists say, because these glaciers provide one of the few archives of historical climate change in the tropics, where long ice core records are rare.

The white peak of Kilmanjaro, which at 5,895 meters is the highest point in Africa, has long been one of the continent’s most recognizable landmarks. However, over the last two years, research has indicated that

Kilmanjaro’s glaciers are retreating at an unprecedented rate, shrinking by almost 80 percent since 1912. Now new findings published Oct. 17 in the journal “Science” indicate the glaciers are melting at a rate of about one-half meter per year, supporting previous predictions that, if current climate conditions continue, the ice caps will vanish by 2020. (ENS)

US thirst for oil threatens Canada

US demand for fossil fuels is destroying Canadian air, land, and water resources, according to a new report released by two environmental groups.

The US-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Sierra Club of Canada say oil and gas production in Canada, driven by demand in the US, is threatening huge swaths of Canadian wilderness and marine areas, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and exposing millions of Canadians in rural areas to dangerous air emissions.

The oil and gas industry’s activities are legal under Canadian law, and are encouraged by government subsidies, the groups add.

The report, “ America’s Gas Tank: The High Cost of Canada’s Oil and Gas Export Strategy,” shows that Canada, not Saudi Arabia, is the single largest supplier of oil and gas to the United States. Over the past decade, Canadian oil production has increased by about 50 percent, and gas production by more than two-thirds.

Today, about 60 percent of Canadian oil and gas is exported to the US market.

NRDC and the Sierra Club released their report in the middle of a heated debate in Canada on ratifying the international Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gasses.

The report calls for Canada to adopt renewable energy sources, protect wilderness areas from fossil fuel exploitation, and pass tougher laws to limit pollution from the oil and gas industry.

The Canadian oil and gas industry has bankrolled a public relations campaign to reject Kyoto in favor of what it is calling a “Made in Canada” solution that would contain no greenhouse gas reduction targets. (ENS)