The haphazard and arbitrary scattering of structures across the landscape devastates rural areas in many ways: it homogenizes the countryside once dotted with forests, fields, farmland, and rivers, lakes and ponds; it destroys the agricultural heritage of this country; it upsets small-town life; and it changes the economic and cultural character of these areas.

Between 1970 and 1990, almost 20 million acres of rural land were developed nationwide. A total of 400,000 acres a year are chewed up to build residential and commercial centers.

Even places like Vermont, a state with a powerful rural legacy, is not immune to development pressures. The very name of the state, "Vermont" is practically synonymous with rural life in this country. Its rural personality is largely responsible for the area's economic health as millions of tourists visit Vermont each year and produce billions of dollars in revenue for state coffers.

Yet, beginning in the 1980s, as more and more people moved to Vermont in search of a better quality of life, development (often in the form of malls and superstores) began to slice up this bucolic countryside. In just two years, the state lost 10 percent of its farmland.

Farmland all across the country is threatened by contagious sprawl. Today ribbons of highway reach across acre after acre of lush fields. The seemingly unstoppable march of development across fertile, high quality farmland is quickly undermining the nation's agricultural productivity.

An astounding 70 percent of prime or unique farmland is now in the path of rapid development, according to a report recently released by the American Farmland Trust which analyzed 181 major land resource areas. Texas lost more prime and unique farmland than any other state, nearly a half million acres from 1982 to 1992.

Utah is another state whose rural heritage is threatened by sprawl. Some of Utah's prime farmland, made more precious by its relative scarcity in a state which is mostly desert, is concentrated in a narrow strip of land between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. The proposed Legacy Highway, which is being fought by a broad coalition of farmers and citizens' groups, would cut right through the center of some of the most productive farmland in the state.

Rural areas everywhere are today paying the price for the sprawl that inevitably accompanies population growth -- traffic jams, more air pollution, cookie cutter-like housing, and ruined environment.

Sprawl Threatens Our Natural Environment
Sprawl chews up the countryside, rolling over millions of acres of forest, wetlands, and prairie, fragmenting landscapes, disrupting wildlife habitat, and altering rivers, streams and watersheds.

One of the most damaging impacts of sprawl on the country's natural resouces is run-off from city streets, which carries pollutants and excess sediment into waterways, degrading water quality and smothering habitat.

Two of this country's greatest natural assets, the Chesapeake Bay, the largest watershed in the states of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, and the Sonoran Desert are suffering the ravages of sprawl.

Around the Chesapeake Bay, sprawl is gobbling up open space and forest lands quickly. According to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, more than 90,000 acres are consumed by sprawl each year in the bay states. Today, 4 to 5 times more land is used per person than 40 years ago. As a result, toxins and sediments are flowing into the bay in increasing amounts and upsetting the delicate balance of the watershed's ecosystem. Sprawl is undermining progress in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and protecting habitat for fish and wildlife.

The Sonoran Desert is the largest desert in North America, covering about 120,000 square miles. Daily summer temperatures exceed 100 degrees F (38 degrees C). Most parts of the desert receive less than 10 in. (less than 250 mm) of rainfall a year. But, far from being a parched and barren wasteland, the Sonoran Desert is one of the most botanically diverse deserts in the world. More than 2,500 plant species and various desert animals call the Sonoran Desert home.

Today, more than 80 percent of Arizona's population lives in the Sonoran Desert, which includes the rapidly growing areas around Phoenix and Tucson. For the natural habitat of the Sonoran Desert, which evolved gradually over millennia, the rapid changes brought by man-made development, including fragmented habitats, new competition for food and water by imported non-native species, and changes in air and climate conditions, could pose a very serious threat.

Sprawl Threatens Our Historic Treasures
When commercial and residential development swarms over the countryside, people are drawn away from the older, established central cities, downtowns, and neighborhoods where so much of this nation's heritage is concentrated. These areas then lose their economic health, and the buildings and other historical reminders which define these once bustling places fall into disrepair. Lancaster County has been called "the Garden Spot of America, a kind of Eden on the East Coast, the idyllic farmscape where the Amish retreat from the modern world" (Boston Globe, Michael Grunwald). The county also produces hundreds of millions of dollars in farm products and hosts thousands of tourists every year who come to enjoy the area's beauty and experience a piece of American history.

But Lancaster is beginning to take on the cast of the rest of suburbia. While an agricultural protection program is in place, the county has lost about 4,800 acres to development each year since 1980 -- or 68 square miles over a ten-year period -- to house 60,000 people, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP). To add insult to injury, Walmart has proposed building five stores which the Amish and other dedicated citizens are trying to prevent from happening. Lancaster County has in fact been named one of the most endangered historic sites in the world by the NTHP because of the devastating effects of sprawl.

The historic city of Spokane, Washington used to be known as "The City Beautiful". But today citizens believe the car has taken over and crushed the area's charm. While the pressures of growth are nothing new for Spokane (beginning as early as the 1900's), now the city is at a crossroads. A projected 54,000 new residents are expected to move to Spokane in the next 20 years. Citizens are now mobilizing to find ways to mitigate sprawl while accommodating growth that is consistent with quality of life.