Virginia's Population in 2050
Paying the Price for Uncontrolled Growth

A summary

Virginia is past the point where growth and development can continue without significant detrimental costs to the state's existing residents. These costs include overcrowded roads, congestion and sprawl, loss of prime farmland and open space, loss of wetlands and water shortages, and overcrowded schools.

That's the conclusion of noted demographer and population policy expert Dr. Leon Bouvier, and Sharon McCloe Stein, executive director of Negative Population Growth (NPG), in a new NPG report on the probable impact of Virginia's projected population growth.

Conservative projections are for the state's population to increase by two million in the next fifty years. Can Virginia's infrastructure and environment support two million more people? At what cost and to whom?

Polls show that most Virginia voters oppose continued population increases. Further, they believe the current pace of population growth and development benefits a narrow group of developers and related industries. Huge majorities also say state and federal leaders have a responsibility to enact policies that reduce development and slow population growth so that a high quality of life, a healthy environment and a sound economy can be maintained.

In this report, Bouvier and Stein note that there is often a disconnect between what local communities want and what the state mandates - generally a philosophy the Virginia Pilot said "might be described as 'let her rip.'" The authors survey a number of communities, and find that local neighborhoods do make progress in winning important regional battles, but without superior local control are unlikely to win the war.

Gaining more local control is pivotal, say the authors. But can local communities ever prevail in the effort to overcome the huge financial leverage and political clout of the state's developers? Bouvier and Stein say "yes," but only if citizens work together on a variety of levels, federal, state and local.

Suggestions include:

• Require major new development proposals to be put to a community-wide vote of affected residents.
• Work to forge new alliances among counties to try to ban development in areas that lack public facilities - such as schools, roads and utilities - and to charge impact fees for every house a developer builds.
• Work to repeal legislation approved recently in Virginia that locks in landowners' right to develop property inconsistently with the existing infrastructure.
• Link permission to build with a county's ability to build new schools. Charge higher impact fees.
• Push the state government to buy up more land to preserve for open space.
• Support strong programs in the state to encourage small families through education and family planning.
• Encourage the state to enter into cooperative agreements with federal authorities to improve immigration law enforcement, and encourage comprehensive immigration reforms to reduce annual nationwide immigration levels.

Bouvier and Stein conclude that even local groups must work on national population policy issues like fertility and immigration - considerations that go beyond the business cycle - and determine the future of the state. Pressure must be placed at all levels -- local, state and federal -- to impact these policies.

Bouvier and Stein conclude with an optimistic assessment that new community empowerment is leading to more effective grassroots action, and a renewed hope that Virginia residents can develop a sustainable economy and environment by reducing population growth.