Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
View Related Topics
September 5, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 16; Column
1; National Desk
LENGTH: 1431 words
HEADLINE: Urban Sprawl Threatens the Solitude and
Fragile Lands of Georgia's State Parks
BYLINE: By
JANE GROSS
DATELINE: CARTERSVILLE, Ga., Aug. 31
BODY:
Before metropolitan Atlanta began its
relentless march north, bulldozing forests of loblolly pine and soybean fields,
the Etowah Indian Mounds here was a remote state historic site where children
visited the ancient burial grounds, and astronomers viewed the stars.
But now the site, about an hour northwest of Atlanta, borders a
subdivision of 500 houses, whose roofs are visible from the ceremonial mound and
whose lights obscure the constellations. Two other subdivisions are on the
drawing board, off Old Alabama Road, which is soon to become a four-lane
highway.
"It's closing in on us," said Libby Bell, the site's manager,
who frets that a sod farm and a pasture flanking the mounds could give way to
urban sprawl, despite promises from the owners that they will not sell. But Ms.
Bell worries that when land is money, promises can be broken.
"What
happens next?" she asked. "We could have subdivisions right up to the fence
line."
The development at the perimeter of the Indian mounds, and at an
additional 24 of Georgia's 63 state parks, earned the state the designation as
most threatened in a recent survey by the National Park Trust, a
Washington-based private land conservancy. According to the report, 8,212 of
74,542 acres of state parkland here is endangered by sprawl, commercial and
residential development, traffic and rising land values, which all make it
difficult for governments to buy open land.
The parks said to be in
jeopardy, in states including Nevada, Florida and Ohio, are not themselves at
risk of disappearing. Rather, they are ringed, or soon will be, by buildings,
rushing traffic and neighbors who may consider fragile areas extensions of their
backyards.
"The solitude you expect in a park is now being lost to
high-rises, second homes and lawn mower noise," said Paul C. Pritchard,
president of the National Park Trust. Urban encroachment, Mr. Pritchard said,
turns "conservation areas into city parks, and historical sites
into playgrounds."
That Georgia was at the top of the list came as no
surprise to conservationists, urban planners, political leaders and residents
here, who have watched their state -- and especially the 16-county greater
Atlanta area -- explode in the last decade, unfettered by geographic barriers
like mountains or oceans, and encouraged by the region's laissez-faire attitude
toward regulating land use.
The threat to the parks, said Lawrence
Frank, a professor of city planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is
"one of the unthought-out, less measured impacts of rapid, unplanned growth,"
more often discussed in terms of choking traffic, unsightly strip malls,
cookie-cutter subdivisions and air like ozone soup.
"We used to laugh at
Los Angeles," said Vince Taylor, manager of the Sweetwater Creek state park in
Lithia Springs, the closest to downtown Atlanta and destined to be ringed by
office parks and condominiums. "Now we are Los Angeles."
Mr. Taylor,
whose park is a 2,050-acre oasis just 15 miles from city skyscrapers, is more
resigned to development than Ms. Bell, who grew up in Lilly, Ga., (population
50) and assumed when she came here 21 years ago that the Etowah Mounds would
remain pristine and that adjoining lands, also troves of Indian artifacts, would
not be disturbed.
Mr. Taylor, who grew up in Decatur and witnessed
Atlanta's sprawl from its earliest days, had no such expectations. "The
certainty is we will be surrounded," he said, from the bait shop at Sweetwater,
which includes a 215-acre manufactured lake stocked with fish, the ruins of a
Civil War-era textile factory, hiking trails and a butterfly garden. "The
uncertainty is by what."
Already, there are small subdivisions at the
edges of Sweetwater Creek and a few apartment complexes, including one with
placards promising that "luxury living is a walk from the park." As he inspects
his territory, Mr. Taylor is dismayed to find deer blinds, children's forts and
yard cuttings on park property.
Recently, ground was broken on the
park's southern border for a mini-city called New Manchester, which will occupy
3,350 acres on both banks of Sweetwater Creek, a tributary of the Chatahoochee
River. New Manchester, named for the ruined textile factory, is to include homes
for 9,000 people, office space for 25,000, a golf course, a hotel, a school and
paths that connect to the trail system at the park. The enormous project does
not disturb Mr. Taylor or his superiors in the State Department of Natural
Resources because they say it is thoughtfully designed.
"We could have a
lot worse neighbors," Mr. Taylor said, "and eventually we will."
He
worries about an untouched tract of land adjacent to New Manchester, approved
for multifamily dwellings, that has changed hands several times. Then there is
the vast acreage, already bought by speculators, that is yet to be connected to
the Douglas County sewer system. Once it is, Mr. Taylor said, dirt roads are
likely to become four-lane highways, and forests of oak and hickory will give
way to office parks.
But office parks, "if they are nicely done," may be
preferable to housing, Mr. Taylor said, because they are in use only from 9 to 5
and tenants are unlikely to use, or misuse, the parkland. Residents, by
contrast, make it difficult to "control our borders," he said, and wear
footpaths through delicate areas.
The development at the edge of both
the Etowah Indian Mounds and the Sweetwater Creek state park might have been
prevented had adjoining property been bought by the state or donated by
landowners. Donations of this kind are less common since changes in the tax code
in 1986 made deductions for philanthropy less generous. And purchases have been
stymied recently by rising costs and static public financing.
Georgia's
governor, Roy Barnes, a Democrat, is widely praised for initiatives to make land
acquisition easier, including one that provides $300 million to the state's most
rapidly developing counties for buying green space, with a goal of 20 percent
per county. But Mr. Barnes is playing catch-up. "He inherited a total mess,"
Professor Frank said.
Help could also come with the resurrection of a
ballot measure, which Georgia's voters rejected two years ago, to add $1 to the
real estate transfer tax for land acquisition in natural areas. The fund would
have yielded $30 million in its first year, said Bert Weerts, director of the
state's parks and historical sites.
Finally, there is pending federal
legislation, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, which has
passed in the House of Representatives and is expected to be considered soon by
the Senate. The bill would give $450 million to the states for land acquisition,
with $10 million to $18 million coming to Georgia, Mr. Weerts said.
Mr.
Weerts was one of 32 state park executives who responded to the survey by the
National Park Trust. In those 32 states, the report said, there are 94,306 acres
of threatened parkland. The top 10 states -- Georgia, North Carolina, Minnesota,
Nevada, West Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Montana -- account
for 62,013 acres, about two-thirds of the total. Among the 18 that did not
respond were California, Texas and New York, the nation's three most populous
states, and Alaska, its largest.
Park officials here took no offense at
their ranking, instead hoping that it would draw attention to their plight. Ms.
Bell, for one, would jump at any new state or federal money that would make it
possible to buy land at the edges of her 54-acre historical site. The Etowah
mounds were purchased for preservation in 1953, for a nominal fee, from the
Tumlin family.
The Tumlins, major landowners in Cartersville since 1838,
have sold most of their 3,000 acres, including a 23-acre sod farm owned by Shaw
Industries, one of the nation's largest carpet mills. Henry Tumlin, 83, who
lives next to the park, which he once managed, has known the "Shaw boys," as he
calls them, since childhood, and is confident they will keep their vow to leave
the land undeveloped.
Given the wealth of Shaw Industries, Ms. Bell is
reasonably sure that the agricultural land will not be sold. She is less
confident about the 50-acre pasture that Mr. Tumlin still owns, where cows graze
within sight of a 63-foot ceremonial mound, home to Indian priests and
chieftains 1,000 years ago. Mr. Tumlin and his wife, Charlsie, 84, have no
children but have willed the pasture to two nephews on the condition that they
keep the land in the family. One nephew is a dentist, Mrs. Tumlin said. The
other is a builder.
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photos: A downpour, above, sent paradegoers
scurrying for cover along the parade route on Eastern Parkway, but only briefly
interrupted the festivities. The parade is the biggest in the city. After three
people were killed in accidents at last year's celebration, the city banned
alcohol at all large parades.; Steel drums, like this one played on a float,
provided part of the musical backdrop yesterday for the West Indian American
Carnival Parade in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. (Photographs by James
Estrin/The New York Times)
Chart: "A Closer Look: Parks in
Trouble"
1. Georgia...8,212 (Acres Threatened)
2. North Carolina...8,115
3. Minnesota...6,000
4. Nevada...5,298
5. West Virginia...1,688
6. Colorado...3,000
7. Flordia...*25,500
8. Indiana...2,000
9.
Ohio...1,500
10. Montana...1,200
*Despite the large amount of
land, the threat is not considered immediate.
(Source: National Park Trust)
LOAD-DATE: September 5, 2000 
