More than $23 billion spent in 5 years to preserve land; controversial computer modeling used for determining the 'need'

Environmental Calculus- Counting the Costs of Growth With a Forest of Formulas

By KIRK JOHNSON
New York Times

Published: November 23, 2003

F the land-use planning process ever becomes a Saturday morning cartoon show (perhaps C-Span would be interested), the role of Suburban Sprawl would undoubtedly be played by somebody like the villainous Snidely Whiplash, facing off against the virtuous hero, Open Space, played by Dudley Do-Right.

That is increasingly how voters see the subject, anyway. Over the last five years they have approved more than $23 billion in public money across the country to preserve land from development, according to Trust for Public Land, a conservation group.

New Jersey, considered the national leader, has committed $1.9 billion all by itself. On Election Day this month it became the first state with a taxpayer-financed anti-sprawl program in every county. Of 78 conservation measures on the ballot across the nation, 64 passed.

The argument that led to those votes is as simple as any melodrama: Open space and sprawl are antithetical, mutually exclusive choices. Black hat or white hat. Hiss or hurray. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

Politicians and policy makers say the proof is in the numbers. The land acquisition process is awash in computer models and analytic tools that can pinpoint everything from the water runoff if a piece of land is paved over to the tax and traffic implications of turning a farm into a subdivision. And while much of the data seems to support the preservationist cause, some environmentalists worry that an over-reliance on calculation can erase the visceral and emotional appeal that animates conservation in the first place. There's a deep and desirable fuzziness to thinking about nature, they say, that can't be factored in.

But the tools, many admit, are handy.

Farm and forest advocates, for example, have developed methods for showing how much a stand of trees or a working vegetable patch contributes to a community. The perceived value of urban green belts has soared as researchers have measured the impact that trees can have in moderating temperatures and reducing energy use. Cost-benefit analysis is increasingly used, especially on the federal level, to assign dollar values to things like fish species, to better gauge what price society should pay, or not, to save them.

Some critics of nature-by-numbers say that formulas are a crutch for decision makers to avoid the responsibility and consequences of human choice. Others say that assigning values or measuring outcomes is inherently unreliable because numbers, as the last few years of Wall Street history have shown, can always be manipulated.

"There are lots of people who love the numbers and lots who hate them, too — the dust hasn't settled on that debate," said Lisa Heinzerling, a professor of law at Georgetown University and a specialist in environmental law.

Many conservation groups putting forth formulas for land use are convinced that making computer models accessible to local elected officials is good for preservation.

American Forests, for example, a nonprofit conservation group based in Washington, has developed software for measuring the value of forests, and the calculations generally show that preserving them makes economic sense. The increased costs of controlling water runoff alone, said Gary Moll, a vice president of the group's urban forests center, can more than justify preservation.

Mr. Moll said the computer model, which American Forests sells for $800, is aimed only at giving officials more information.

"We're just trying to use what scientists and engineers say are the best formulas, and put it in the hands of people who make decisions," he said.

Other experts say that assigning a dollar value to everything in nature becomes absurd pretty quickly — or at least darn hard to prove. People have tried, for instance, to measure the worth of everything from humpback whales — about $18 billion by one count, including their contribution to biodiversity and aesthetics — to the sum of nature itself. One study in 1997 said that the world's rivers and lakes generated precisely $1.7 trillion a year in value.

"It's a really distorted lens," said Frank Ackerman, an environmental economist and research director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. It can also backfire on preservationists, he said. The Bush administration, for example, has recalculated equations used during the Clinton years and concluded that some environmental regulations are less beneficial or more costly than the Democrats had said.

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But numbers, in the end, are still just that. The emotional and spiritual pull of the wide open spaces gets lost in translation whichever side wins.

Some believers in the private market say the whole argument that government should fight sprawl through land-preservation is flawed because government itself, they say, is the villain in fostering sprawl in the first place. Costly environmental regulations, they say, induce private owners to sell or develop their properties, while estate taxes have forced families to sell farms or other land assets after a death in the family.

"What we need to be doing is finding ways to keep these lands in private hands," said R. J. Smith, the director of the Center for Private Conservation, a nonprofit foundation based in Washington that supports market-based environmental protection. "The worst way to get rational long-term management of our natural resources is to turn it over to the government."

Many local communities, meanwhile, are trying to find a path between the extremes of head and heart.

In Voorhees Township, N.J., for example, where voters approved a referendum this month for a $550,000-a-year land-buying plan, the town Environmental Commission created a point system to rank the best potential purchases. But a survey paid for by the Trust for Public Land before the election also helped leaders embrace the softer side — what residents said they wanted. The survey helped steer the plan toward water quality and farmland conservation.

It is perhaps a measure of the built-up nature in places like Voorhees, near Philadelphia, that the No. 1 item on the wish list is the preservation of a golf course. The current owner has announced plans to build up to 206 homes there. The town wants to buy the course, operate it and use the fees to help defray the costs of preserving it.

A wild and scenic wilderness it's not, said the mayor, Harry A. Platt. No would-be John Muir will ever rhapsodize about the 17th green. But it will definitely have a clear-cut and measurable outcome, he said: No need for additional sewer lines and no more cars on the town's crowded roads.