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TODAY Tuesday 8 July 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Tuesday 8 July 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: By the Sea, By the Sea
"Any damn fool can love California," Wes Jackson says. "It takes some character to love Kansas." The nation is losing its gumption, apparently.
People are moving away from farm and rangeland and moving to places traditionally associated with vacation time: mountains and seashore. The three American coasts -- Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf -- and the broad back of the Mountain West are growing at a pace far in excess of that of the country as a whole. The exception to the out-migration pattern from farm country is provided by sprawl; even profitable farm operations within commuting distance of a major city have a hard time competing with the value they would command if converted into subdivision tracts.
The New York Times yesterday ran an excellent article by Robert Hanley which examined one small but dramatic example of this overall trend. Ocean County, New Jersey, the eastern portion of which contains a long barrier beach and a shallow estuary, the western portion of which consists of a fertile coastal plain drained by lazy rivers, spent most of its US history as an out-of-the-way place populated by farmers and crabbers. Duck hunters loved it. The construction of the Garden State Parkway changed all that; since 1950, the population of Ocean County has grown 700 percent.
Many of the farms have been converted into settlements; the farms that remain and the new houses that were built deposit into the rivers high levels of nitrogen from wastes and fertilizers and moderate levels of pesticide runoff; the rivers empty into shallow Barnegat Bay (average depth five feet) where their altered effluents cause the growth of algae blooms which choke oxygen needed by the crabs and other species; the crabbers are displaced by growing numbers of recreational boaters, whose motors leak heavy metals and whose toilets are often emptied overboard; older residents complain of overcrowding and noise, particularly from the proliferation of Jet Skis. And so it goes.
Hanley is careful not to get too snooty; this is still an attractive place, obviously, and he doesn't scold people for wanting to move there or build second homes there. But he does describe a process that Americans have just not wanted to control very much, probably because control implies a diminution (however reasonable) of the rights of property owners to do as they please. Attempts to modify uses of property -- limit Jet Skis, persuade homeowners to use less lawn fertilizer -- have failed. What's worked is the simple but effective expedient of environmentalist purchase of real estate. The good guy in this story is the Trust for Public Land, an excellent, nimble organization that plans to purchase 37,500 acres of woods and marshland along the banks of those lazy rivers that empty into Barnegat Bay. This upstream, get-it-off-the-market strategy is no substitute for land-use planning, but it sure is useful.
That the demand to live and play in places like Ocean County will probably continue to grow was evidenced in another article from yesterday, this one in the Wall Street Journal. E.S. Browning and Stephen E. Frank told the stories of many middle-management Americans whose 401 (k) retirement plans have -- thanks to the luck of the bull market in stocks -- made them rich, usually to their surprise. Professors and sales managers and opticians are retiring as millionaires. Few of them are having more than three minutes' worth of difficulty adjusting to their windfalls, and many of them are buying real estate in the mountains and by the seashore. As always, watch out for the boomers. The oldest of the postwar babies turn 52 in August, and lots of them have stashed away piles of dough with which to enjoy nature by buying a piece of it.
There are two remedies other than widespread adoption of benevolent land-use practices, and both are probably more likely. The first is a collapse of the boom which fuels the demand for classic-vacation real estate. The second is growth in the acquired taste for real estate not generally associated with recreation. As Wes Jackson knows, there are few pleasures in life to rival a seat atop a ridge on the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas, with the undulant, flower-specked prairie heaving in oceanic majesty. And no Jet Skis.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Fred Hapgood, author and impresario of the Explore with Fred feature of our On The Web section, has just amended, revised, and re-configured his singular survey of the edge of the internet envelope. We don't know any better place to go for information about -- and links to -- the Websites where humans and nature are making some unprecedented connections.
Recent "Today" columns:
7/07: Huddled Masses
7/03: Three-Dot Environmentalism...
7/02: Bothersome Science
7/01: Forest for the Trees
6/30: Investing in Pessimism
6/27: Good Speech (Keep it Quiet)
6/26: Bleeping Joan of Arc
6/25: The World at 42nd Street
6/24: Il Faut Que Get a Grip
6/23: The Emily Dickenson Parking Garage
To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.