Who's to blame for sprawl? Some of the culprits are easy to spot: Developers build new homes on the outskirts of suburbia; consumers demand a sport-utility vehicle in every garage to get to the Wal-Mart on every block. But the government's role in abetting sprawl isn't always so obvious. According to a recent analysis, its innocuous-seeming commercial loans are ravaging the Washington, D.C., area.
"In a three-year period, the Small Business Administration sank $400 million into D.C.-area loans, mostly for strip malls, mini-marts, and other hallmarks of sprawl," says John Talberth, conservation director for the Forest Conservation Council. The Council and Friends of the Earth sued the federal agency last October, charging that it had not considered the effects of its loans on land-use patterns, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. (In February, the SBA began meeting with the environmental groups to discuss a settlement agreement.)
The two organizations
followed up this year by joining a Sierra Club lawsuit against the General Services Administration to stop a planned relocation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration headquarters to a suburban site far from public transportation. They also filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers for illegally permitting developers to drain and fill Virginia wetlands. "We want to force the government to fund projects in older urban areas instead of developing on the fringes or in sensitive wetlands and forests," says Talberth, whose sprawl-busting mission now extends to Atlanta, Tallahassee, Denver, Phoenix, and Seattle. But if you're taking on the federal government, there's no better place to start than in its own backyard.
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