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National
Coastal Sprawl Pattern Analyzed in Report
Current land consumption in some coastal metropolitan areas is ten
times faster than population growth and if this trend continues,
the coastal acreage under development will jump from 14 percent in
1997 to more than 25 percent by 2025, causing ''severe ecological
damage,'' warns a report entitled ''Coastal Sprawl: The Effect of
Urban Design on Aquatic Ecosystems in the United States,'' with its
author, South Carolina Coastal Conservation League executive
director Dana Beach, seeing hope in a better integration of the
coastal issue into such land-use reform movements as Smart Growth
and the New Urbanism. Prepared for the Pew Oceans Commission --
which is conducting the first independent review of national ocean
policy in over 30 years -- and released at the National Press Club
in Washington a week before the April 22nd international Earth Day,
the report calls the potential for change of coastal development
patterns ''enormous,'' with growing momentum for coordinated
revisions of ecosystem protection policies. ''Now is the time to add
the cause of coastal ecology, and the voices of coastal protection
advocates, to the call for land-use reform,'' said Beach. The
commission's coastal development committee chairman, Charleston
Mayor Joseph Riley added, ''Communities need to make active
decisions about where and how to grow if they are going to protect
their quality of life.'' The report is available at
www.pewoceans.org
4/16/2002
Click here to view the source publication.
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