October 23, 01 - 5.5 Million New Floridians By 2025

Washington, D.C. – Florida’s population growth is overwhelming the state’s growth management efforts, straining schools and highways, drying up already scarce water supplies, swallowing valued open space, and destroying the state’s quality of life, according to a new report released today by population policy organization Negative Population Growth (NPG).

If Florida does not institute a plan to limit population growth, warns the report, projected increases of more than 5.5 million residents in the next 25 years will generate even more traffic congestion and sprawl, open space will continue to vanish, and 16,000 new teachers will have to be hired every year to keep up with swelling enrollments. Diminishing water quality and availability, air pollution, road congestion, and an overwhelmed infrastructure will cause a rapid deterioration of quality of life in the state.

“Unless population pressures are reduced, Florida’s fledgling growth management efforts are doomed to failure,” says NPG executive director Sharon McCloe Stein. “Preserving Florida’s quality of life requires new controls on the rate of residential development, new federal limits on immigration, and political leadership that recognizes the downside of population growth.”

An NPG poll in 1999 found that most Florida voters believe continued population growth will worsen the quality of life in the state. Over 70 percent believe Florida’s overcrowding and overpopulation is a major problem. Nearly 60 percent believe that adding another five million people to Florida’s population is a serious problem. And 68 percent agree that “Florida would be better-off in the long term with a smaller population to maintain a sound economy and a healthy environment.”

The report, “Focus on Florida: Population, Resources, and Quality of Life,” was authored by Stein and Dr. Leon Bouvier, the former demographic advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Population and the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy and currently a demography professor at Old Dominion University.

For comment or additional information, contact Alison Green at (202) 667-8950.