Urges
Governor to Petition for Restoration of National Forest Protections
ATLANTA – Land conservation attracts tourist dollars,
minimizes flood damage and costs local governments less in services than
residential development among other benefits, according to a new report
released today. The study, entitled
“Protecting Our Natural Heritage,” was released by Environment Georgia, the new
home of Georgia PIRG’s environmental work, along with Georgia ForestWatch, the
Georgia Conservancy, and the Sierra Club.
“Conserving land is a smart move
that will help Georgia’s
economy as well as the environment,” said Stephanie Powell, campaign
coordinator for Environment Georgia. “But, if our elected officials do not act
soon, we stand to lose our natural heritage to overdevelopment.”
Georgia loses 578 acres of green space to development everyday,
endangering the state’s treasured natural areas and working landscapes. “Protecting Our Natural Heritage” includes ten
Georgia case studies describing how conserving land benefits the state’s
economy as well as the environment.
For example, maintaining
significant amounts of green space helps control the operating costs of local
government. Residential development
demands public services that cost more than it provides in property tax income
and the demand for these services continues indefinitely. Research by University
of Georgia’s Nanette Nelson and
Jeffrey Dorfman found that residential development in Habersham and Oconee counties required $1.16 in expenditures for every
dollar of tax revenue they brought in while working farms and undeveloped land
required only $0.82 in expenditures for every dollar they bring in revenue.
Also, the revival of Tallulah
Gorge as a state park helps bring more than 300,000 visitors a year and more
than $69 million in revenue to the two-county area, supporting 930 jobs in
2004. Other values and services land
conservation provides include:
- Prevents flood damage. The towns of Albany and Newton in
southwest Georgia
spent $3 million relocating hundreds of homes, businesses and schools
outside the floodplain after tropical storm Alberto caused severe flooding in
1994. The cities subsequently reaped the benefits—avoiding $5.1 million in
damage that could have resulted from a severe storm that developed in 1998.
- Increases the value of nearby properties. University of Georgia
researchers found that properties close to Sandy
Creek Park
in Athens-Clarke
County sold for up to
$8,500 more than properties farther away. Parks enhance the assets of homeowners
and help contribute to the tax base for local government.
- Promotes a clean and plentiful supply of water.
Buffers around waterways reduce pollution, preserve sources of clean drinking water and minimize water
treatment costs. For these reasons, citizens in the upper Tallapoosa watershed
in Carroll County,
west of Atlanta,
overwhelmingly passed a special purpose local option sales tax in 2003,
providing $20 million to protect key watershed lands.
- Provides agricultural products. Working
landscapes, like those in the small-scale farms of Dooly and Jones counties
near Macon, are
a key part of the agricultural economy and a stabilizing influence for rural
communities.
- Reduces air pollution. Tree canopies in the
10-county Atlanta
metropolitan area remove 19 million pounds of pollutants from Atlanta’s air every year. Achieving the same
emissions reduction with man-made technology would cost $47 million per year.
- Provides areas to hunt and fish. Kelly Ridge
Roadless Area in the Chattahoochee
National Forest is home to one of Georgia’s largest areas of old
growth forest, several pristine trout streams, and a wide variety of wildlife.
Across the state, special areas like Kelly
Ridge provide places for hundreds of
thousands of Georgians to hunt and fish—in addition to offering critical
habitat for more than a thousand different types of plants and animals “of
special concern”, including 63 species endangered or threatened across the U.S.
- Supports economic redevelopment. The BeltLine
plan for Atlanta
envisions organizing the region’s future growth around an interconnected
system of parks, transit and trails circling the core of the
city. Over the next 20 to 25 years, planners expect the project to
create 30,000 new jobs (50 percent more than in the absence of
the project) and increase the regional tax base by an estimated $20
billion.
- Preserves history. Kennesaw
Mountain National
Park in Cobb
County preserves over
2,800 acres where an important clash of the Civil War occurred in 1864. It is a
valuable educational resource for the more than one million people that visit
every year and a major draw for heritage tourism—the third most popular tourism
activity in the state.
"We applaud Environment Georgia's
efforts to report on the important services and benefits provided by our
natural areas," said Susan Kidd, Senior Vice President for the Georgia
Conservancy. "Land conservation helps maintain Georgia as a
great place to live and will leave a natural legacy for future
generations."
Land conservation advocates
urged elected officials to do more to preserve Georgia’s natural heritage for
future generations including:
- Protect
public lands from logging and roadbuilding, especially roadless areas in
the Chattahoochee National Forests and
protect federal lands proposed for sale in the federal budget.
- Develop an
official land conservation roadmap and use it to prioritize preservation
efforts in the most ecologically valuable areas—areas that provide drinking
water, flood control, wildlife habitat, recreation and other benefits.
- Create
priority areas for growth that complement the land conservation roadmap;
and implement land use regulations at the local government level that encourage
growth only in priority areas.
- Create a
dedicated funding mechanism for land conservation. For example, the Florida
Forever program has protected more than 1 million acres of critical lands
across Florida
in the last five years using bond funding. Maryland uses a real estate transfer tax to
fund Program Open Space, expected to provide nearly $300 million in
conservation funding in 2006. In Georgia, millions of dollars could
be raised annually for land conservation using bonds, real-estate transfer tax,
sales tax, or other options.
“Our state will most likely become more
crowded, congested and polluted in ten, twenty, fifty years. I ask you this,
will our children's children have more green space, clean rivers to enjoy and
quiet forests to roam in that future? Only if we secure those places now. We have no excuse not to adopt stronger
solutions,” said Wayne Jenkins, Executive Director of Georgia ForestWatch.
