Build a wider highway and the traffic will come
Commentary by PAT MURPHY
Those concerned about mindless growth in the Wood River Valley will
find irony in the signature phrase of "Field of Dreams," the film adaptation of
W.P. Kinsella’s "Shoeless Joe" novel about a baseball field, and
Idaho’s stubborn idea for transforming Highway 75 into a wider, urban-friendly
speedway.
"Build it, and they’ll come."
You bet.
A wider highway would beckon more traffic and jump-start a stampede to
accelerate more land development, ending grandeur so zealously preserved.
Stampeding growth is an incurable disease, a contagion that spreads
throughout a community to building trades and suppliers, money lenders, realtors,
retailers and politicians who cherish tax revenues and who like to boast about being a
"fast growing" city.
The first symptom, a slogan to silence critics: "you can’t
build a fence to keep people out," so, let growth begin. A common sense rebuttal: But
why supply the rope to hang ourselves?
After private land is gobbled up, the drumbeat will begin for
Washington to unlock public lands to developers to make way for more newcomers.
Idaho’s Republican delegation in Washington, a quartet of
sound-alikes who put commercial development over environment every time, will lend
sympathetic ears.
Growth is seductive, addictive, profitable – but with
consequences. Tranquility is replaced with stress.
In time, when public disgust boils over, politicians will resort to
talk about "smart growth," a new political con in communities where livability
has all but been destroyed in the name of more jobs, larger tax bases, more freeways.
Sorry. Too late.
The addiction slowly degraded my native South Florida, where crime,
drugs, political corruption and unthinking development have destroyed much of the
area’s environment and appeal.
Then, again, in my adopted hometown, Phoenix, Ariz. where the
desert—millennia in the making—has been paved over for ticky-tacky housing and
strip malls connected by freeways that’re choked with uptight drivers numbly bouncing
between jobs and suburbs where neighbors are strangers.
Could it happen here?
Consider these clues.
The Forest Service has decided to give an Arizona promoter 282 prime
acres at the entrance to Grand Canyon National Park to develop as a resort, in exchange
for 2,118 acres he owns in 12 scattered sites elsewhere. What air pollution and low-flying
sightseeing helicopters haven’t destroyed, a resort at Grand Canyon’s entrance
will take care of the rest.
Then this: Off-road vehicle manufacturers just met in Montana with
Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials to lobby for wider foot trails so
noisy, gasoline-powered, four-foot-wide (!) ORVs could race and rip up and down serene
trails, forcing hikers and mountain bikers out of the way. Goodbye woodlands.
What is it about growth addicts: They seem Hell-bent on raping Mother
Nature’s most delicate treasures wherever they can be found, then look for new
untouched areas to destroy.
Murphy is the retired publisher of the Arizona
Republic and a former radio commentator.
