A APPENDIX 3 Man and His Environment merica must look to its resources as never before. Population growth and the migration to the city, coupled with enormous technological change, have brought about unbelievably vast increases in consumption of energy fuels, minerals, raw materials, and pressures on available water and land. There is a continuing movement toward higher living standards, shorter hours of work, availability of more leisure time to use in more ways, and changing space relations on the heels of a major revolution in transportation of goods and people. These changes, which show no signs of diminishing, are indissolubly linked with natural resources. They affect productivity, income, taxes, the money workers pay for goods and services, their leisure time, and the social and political institutions under which they live. AFL-CIO President George Meany put the problem in perspective recently. He said: "Ambitious but too often heedless Americans have long since occupied the last frontier, felled the once limitless forests, slain the countless game, tilled the prairies, fouled the lakes and rivers and polluted the air. Now the evils committed in the name of progress must be undone; what remains of nature's beauty must be preserved and the air and the waters purified." To meet the conservation challenge of the last third of this century requires the understanding and efforts of all Americans. It is a task which has the full and continuing support of the trade union movement. This support has been spelled out in countless ways before Congress, government agencies, state and local governments. The trade union movement's basic positions are summarized in this publication-a collection of updated and revised articles by George Taylor, an economist in the AFL-CIO Department of Research, that originally appeared in the AFL-CIO American Federationist. America contains a fixed amount of land which is being subjected to increasing demands of more and more people. The onrushing technological revolution, increasing living standards, greater consumption, more leisure time and the new age of transportation are placing enormous burdens on the bounty of the land and sharpening competition and controversy over its control and use. Every day, somewhere in the country one can glimpse bits and pieces of the problem: The urban center that rises in aluminum and glass splendor while the displaced poor burrow deeper into the wretchedness of the ghetto. • The water course running brick-red or chocolate brown with the topsoil washed off a suburban housing development or from farms being mined for money crops. The farmland and woodland sliced up by freeways. • The shopping centers and massive apartment complexes mushrooming on land better suited for city dwellers' recreational needs. • The desolation and poverty of cutover timber land and the ruin that remains in the wake of strip mining. • The hideous wasteland of auto junkyards and the unsightly strings of service stations and factories leading into major cities. In 1900, each American had the equivalent resources of 25 acres of land; by 1950, this was down by one-half to 12.5 acres; in 1966, there were 9.7 acres of land per capita. When the year 2000 rolls around, there will be less than 6 acres of land per capita. And the price of land mounts as intense competition for its uses grows and speculators add to the upward price spiral. These figures do not reveal that seven of every ten Americans now live in urban areas which occupy only about 1 percent of the continental area of the United States. It is estimated that eight of every ten Americans will be living in metropolitan areas by the end of the century. Most of them will live in three supermetropolitan areas that stretch from Boston to Washington, from Buffalo and Pittsburgh to Milwaukee and from San Francisco to San Diego. It seems like only yesterday that hunger for land and freedom drew the first colonists here. It seems like only yesterday that the settlement of the continent was accomplished with the ebullient optimism that the bounty of the American earth was boundless and there would be no tomorrow. From colonial days to the atomic age, control and use of the land were issues that have moulded the lives of generations of Americans. It has been and continues to be conditioned by the long battle between differing philosophies of property rights and ownership and of the nature of government. The Republic in its infancy was precariously situated between the Atlantic and the Alleghenies, looking westward across a vast continent that national imperatives demanded be taken and subdued. Early U.S. land policy laid the basis of survey and settlement in family-sized parcels, characterized, in the words of Daniel Webster, by "... a great subdivision of the soil and a great equality of conditions, the true basis, most certainly, of popular government." The 1.8 billion acres of land in the public domain were disposed of in the form of grants to aid schools and colleges, for the improvement of stock raising and agriculture, for roads, railroads and canals, for extraction of metals and minerals, for commercial timber and for formation of new states. By 1900, the axe had cleared more than 300 million acres of virgin forest. The plow had ripped open nearly 300 million acres of virgin grasslands. The rich store of metals and minerals was being exploited to provide the raw material sinews of an urbanizing industrial society. The country was linked together by transcontinental railroads. Agricultural abundance was serving regional, national and world markets. Immigrants from abroad, as well as rural and small town people, were pouring into the cities. The nation was painfully awakening from its blissful dream of eternal abundance. It found that creation of an industrial giant and an emerging world power had run up some enormous due bills. It began to appraise its land resource with new and uneasy eyes. Coming of age as a nation carried with it a heavy price. Timber and grasslands had been ruthlessly exploited. Wasteful mining had gutted huge areas. Whole species of wildlife had been wiped out or were in danger of extinction. America was brought into the modern conservation era by Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot at the turn of the century. Looking at the land through the eyes of the new breed of conservationists, the public saw 1,904 billion acres of land within the continental limits of the United States containing a wide range of productive capacity, with climate (including precipitation), topography, soil and river systems the most important controlling factors and producing great differences in its potential. The public was being taught that the resources on this land, taken in their entirety, were great but not limitless, that many of them were not renewable-such as metals and minerals. The public was being taught that the strength and wellbeing of the country required careful resource preservation, development and management and strong protection against monopolies. The role of the federal government in resources was being sharply redefined to deal with a problem of national scope and new dimensions. No longer was it to be a passive instrument for giving away the public domain, but the principal planner, investor, steward, researcher and regulator. The new public policy guideline was that all possible benefits stemming from the use of the land be attained and shared by all the people. From Teddy Roosevelt's era came the new concept which has been the yardstick of all conservation programs on the land comprehensive, multipurpose development and use, with the river basin as the operating unit, reaching its fruition in the Tennessee Valley Authority. This concept grew out of Pinchot's insight that all separate resources questions were merely parts of "... the one great central problem of the use of the earth for the good of man." By the time the New Deal came in, the bottom had fallen out of everything for farmer, city dweller and the nation. Franklin D. Roosevelt loved the land like no other president. He had put 10,000 unemployed men to work on New York's forests while governor of that state. In his inaugural address, he talked of putting a million men to work restoring United States timber and rangelands. What the New Deal did to restore the people and their land is familiar history-the Civilian Conservation Corps-uniquely FDR's idea; TVA, whose work to conserve the soil, change the farm practices of the region and restore the forests was as important but less known than its dam building and electric power programs. COUNTY OR MUNICIPAL 17 MILLION ACRES NON-FARM 222 MILLION ACRES LAND OWNERSHIP PUBLIC OWNERSHIP STATE FEDERAL 407 MILLION ACRES TOTAL 1,902 MILLION ACRES FARM 1,120 MILLION ACRES PRIVATE OWNERSHIP INDIAN 56 MILLION ACRES Excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Federally-owned land in Alaska totals 364 million acres. In 1935, Congress passed the Soil Erosion Act, creating the Soil Conservation Service, with Hugh Bennett its first director. By 1940, there were 314 Soil Conservation Districts on 190 million acres and, by 1960, nearly 3,000 located in every state and operating on 98 percent of total U.S. croplands. The Taylor Grazing Act in 1934 regulated use of public domain for cattle and sheep, established user fees and created the Grazing Service out of the old General Land Office in the Department of the Interior. More land and money was made available for protection of fish and wildlife, for national parks, monuments, recreational and primitive areas. The Biological Survey was shifted to the Department of the Interior and became the Fish and Wildlife Service. The private timber industry began to emphasize modern forestry management during this period, while new lands were added to national forests and programs to aid state and private forestry programs were begun. The Great Plains shelter belt of trees, conceived by Ferdinand Hayden 75 years previously, was instituted by Franklin D. Roosevelt. By 1955, it extended 2,000 miles, from Canada to Texas. In the cities and towns, land was acquired under federal programs for low-cost public housing. Efforts to establish self-contained "greenbelt" communities were begun on a pilot basis. The goal was to buy up cheap land around cities, tear down city slums, relocate their former inhabitants in well-planned garden towns and establish cultural centers and parks in the city cores. This concept of Rexford Tugwell had a perverted result in the unplanned suburban sprawl of the post-Korean era, but it also was the genesis of President Johnson's demonstration cities program. By 1960, it was evident that problems of population increase, the growth of great metropolitan areas and the galloping technological revolution no longer could be ignored. The increase of leisure time from shorter hours of work, cheaper travel and higher wages and salaries were bringing the need for more places to play for Americans. There was a mounting drain on non-renewable resources of the land, enormous problems of the future of cities and their ability to function effectively for people and their needs and a slow but pervasive poisoning of the environment by the waste products of industrial technology. Since the 1930s, there had been little change in the pattern of land uses, but the competition among uses -for highways, suburban and city housing, for commerce and industry, for recreation was increasing. There was enormous unplanned land waste and there was unconscionable speculation in land. The New and Fair Deals developed federal mortgage insurance programs for middle income people and for detached suburban homes. It resulted in enormously expanded home ownership and construction, but also caused unplanned urban sprawl-a disar ranged flight to the suburbs from city centers and an intensification of local and regional land use problems. The 1949 Housing Act, which authorized federal aid for urban redevelopment, was intended to retain the vitality of the central city by rebuilding its decaying framework. This program, too, has accentuated the problems of the poor and middle-income families by removing them from condemned housing and giving them the choice of leaving town or finding even worse accommodations. The land retirement program to reduce production of soil destroying crops was expanded under President Truman and carried on by the Eisenhower Administration. By the 1960s more than one-third of America's land was still publicly owned, most of it federally, but large areas also were held by the states. Most federal land had never been in private ownership, particularly in the 17 western states and Alaska. On the other hand, the states disposed of more than 65 percent of their land holdings over the previous years. Land acquisition by public agencies for public uses is on the rise again. This trend will increase, particularly for recreation, with emphasis on nearby facilities to serve the great metropolitan regions. There will be greater use of the power of government for public undertakings-eminent domain, easement, police power and power of the purse. The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations ushered in a new conservation era. The frontiers are the city. The emphasis is on quality, development and preservation, esthetics, recreation, population, environmental hazards. Here are some of the major problems involving land use and the federal programs enacted to deal with them: • Cities and towns: Community Facilities Act, the new Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Economic Opportunities Act. The newly enacted Demonstration Cities program to be administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development establishes the basis for a broad attack on the most crucial metropolitan problems-the slums, housing and recreation needs, urban blight and mass transportation, but lacks adequate financial resources. • Special regions: Appalachian Regional Development, Area Redevelopment and the Public Works and Economic Development Acts. • Outdoor recreation: Land and Water Conservation Fund, Open Space and Wilderness Preservation Acts. The largest addition in history to America's national parks system, with several proposed areas awaiting final action. Also enacted was the Highway Beautification Program and legislation making recreation a part of any decisions on multi-purpose water development projects. • Fish and wildlife: Congress empowered the Secretary of the Interior to use stronger measures, including land acquisition, to protect species of wildfowl in danger of extinction. • The federal public domain: The Land Classification and Multiple Use Acts. • Agriculture: The Conservation Reserve, Rural Areas Redevelopment and Food for Freedom programs. • The environment: Amendments to the Water Pollution Control Act; the Clean Air Act and amendments; the Solid Wastes Act. Passing legislation is only the beginning. How it is administered and how adequately it is financed are crucial to its success. It is difficult to assess either the immediate or longer-range value of the manifold federal programs affecting the land which have been established since 1961. There is a mixture, both of concrete achievement and of mere reshuffling of programs. Duplication of functions, programs at cross purposes and tight-fisted budgeting continue to block meaningful progress. There is no integrated land policy. The City America's new frontier is the city-with its rapidly growing population and deteriorating pockets of slums and poverty. The conflict in land uses is a massive roadblock to the orderly development and improvement of the life of people in towns, cities and larger metropolitan areas. Much land is not being used at all. Much is being misused and not assigned to its best function. Speculative forces freeze land-use patterns into profits instead of the public interest. Urban governments are enclosed in a trap of constantly expanding public service requirements which are outpacing available local revenues. Their planning and zoning agencies are subjected to enormous political and speculative pressures. Planning for urban land use must change its emphasis. There is a great need for an adequate supply of decent housing for poor and middle-income families. There is also the need for schools and hospitals, clean air and water, transit systems and highways, libraries and museums, parking areas and recreation facilities. Meanwhile, urban sprawl, loss of good land to freeways, vehicular congestion and polluted air and water problems grow more serious. Horse and buggy political institutions as reflected in the maze of local juris dictions cannot cope effectively with land-use problems. The price of land, particularly in urban areas, has been in an upward spiral since the 1930s. In the downtown areas of major cities, land is sold by the square foot and speculators amass fortunes each year from putting together land parcels for luxury office and apartment buildings. And in the suburbs, too, land prices soar. The average price of lots of federallyinsured one-family homes skyrocketed 200 percent in 1951-1965. Unless this problem is solved, it will become increasingly expensive and most difficult to rebuild American cities. How much longer can the great metropolitan areas grow and retain their ability to perform their essential functions? What changes are necessary to enlarge freedom of choice for the poor and for minority groups? What is the effect of this haphazard growth on the quality of living and the creative human spirit? The AFL-CIO policy resolution on urban America "urges the federal government to undertake a massive effort to rebuild our cities." Labor's program includes several key proposals which involve changes in land use patterns: An increase in low-rent public housing. including equal housing opportunity without regard for race; increased federal capital grants for urban renewal programs and community facilities, with higher matching funds for the largest cities where needs are greatest and increased federal assistance to achieve forward-looking metropolitan area planning. How effectively large urban areas plan for land use will in large measure determine whether the big cities will continue to sprawl formlessly over the landscape while the cancer of urban blight gnaws away their central cores. Now is the crucial time for the cities to resume their historic roles as seedbeds of creative ideas and fruitful associations of people. The Farm and the Forest Since the 1920s, the technological revolution on the farm has made it possible for a super-abundance of Contrast in land use. Left: Earth is torn open for hard coal. Right: Block-cutting in a national forest reflects sound conservation. |