Rivers Unlimited

The following was a February 20, 2004, guest column for the Cincinnati Post. It says "Make it clean and attractive and they will come!" An environmental way to bring jobs and development.

The message applies everywhere, and to all environmental resources. We've been using Resource Economics to see if specific improvements on rivers will pay. Thus far, all the ones we have looked at will.

Communities should look critically and comprehensively at their environments. With study, they will probably find that environmental improvement investments can be of great economic benefit.

Our state, county and city haven't given much attention to quality of life in their feverish search, these many years, for increased development. Development means more people, industry, commerce, tourism, housing starts, tax base, exports, etc. There've been many downtown redesigns, highway reroutings, consultants, Smale and other commissions, port and waterfront agencies, and stadium decisions.

Hamilton County and Cincinnati have it within their power to make this region significantly richer, healthier, a more desirable place to live and more competitive in drawing the kind of development sought here. The answer is quality of life.

Quality-of-life is why those who have some choice in the matter settle where they do. We live and sometimes work where we do because we seek the highest quality of life we can afford.

Yes, the quality of life also means good schools and personal security.

But it also means clean air, where you don't worry about what your children are breathing and where hospitals don't fill up on bad air days and you don't have to close the windows on certain summer nights. And clean water you can fish in and maybe eat the fish, and swim and kayak in without getting infected or swallowing toxins. And away from the hundreds of acres of sites where the top layer of soils is so toxic as to be Superfund territory.

Quality of life has enormous economic value. We go to beaches, forests, parks, lakes and rivers. Tourism and travel are Ohio's second largest industry, after agriculture. The County could decide to clean up air our air, our toxic sites, our tainted waters, our sewer overflows. County resolutions and lobbying could affect legislative and administrative state and national decisions to improve air and water quality and other quality of life issues. Decisions made here could increase the value of our housing stock, therefore our tax base. They could reduce our medical costs and lost workdays. They could improve our public image. They could bring new visitors, new residents and new businesses.

Disturbed and threatened areas include the Mill Creek Valley, Western Hamilton County, Fernald and Rumpke impacts, Chevron-Texaco and a garbage transfer station.

Opportunities include protecting the Little Miami from an Eastern Corridor Interstate Truckway Connector bridge and highway (Route 32 to I-71). The County should save this rare, priceless natural amenity - a de facto linear park including Armleder, Magrish and Horse Shoe Bend Parks, use it for fishing, hiking, canoeing. It's a National Wild and Scenic River going through 6 miles of Cincinnati.

We should support the Great Miami as an Ohio Scenic River and protect it against adverse development. It will pay, as has the Little Miami. We should support Mill Creek's restoration. It too will pay.

We citizens worked long and hard in good faith in the public interest to come up with the Community Compass Plan. Competent professional planners helped. Let us carry out the plan! The citizens want quality of life and some security that their neighborhoods won't be degraded by adverse development.

The County could require that clean air, water and land rules are observed and enforced. Otherwise the rules are worthless and only a pretense of being in the public interest. The City has abolished its Office of Environmental Management. It has killed Title X. It has defunded its Environmental Advisory Council.

We know how rivers can help the regional economies they flow through. And looking at USEPA studies of the Clean Air Act, the benefits of this Act exceed the costs by a ratio of 40 to 1. Benefits are in lengthened lives, public health, work-days saved, reduced crop damage, reduced property damage, medical costs reduced, etc.

The County's Department of Environmental Services could help to improve public health, housing stock, tax base and public image -- if told to enforce the laws!

This area -- our Hamilton County -- has the potential beauty and attractiveness in our rivers, our hills, our parks and architecture to be world class. We can make it that way!

Organizations that have engaged in that effort over the years: our Park Boards; Little Miami, Inc.; Ohio River Way; Mill Creek Restoration Project; Mill Creek Watershed Council; Hillside Trust; Audubon; Oxbow, Inc.; Friends of the Great Miami; Imago; the Land Conservancy of Hamilton County; Southwestern Ohio Trails Association; Sierra Club's Miami Group; Environmental Community Organization; Ohio River Foundation; Greenacres Foundation; Concerned Citizens of Western Hamilton County. There are more. All these are associated with the natural beauty and resources of the region. They are all providing higher quality of life for our residents.
posted by Mike at 4:50 PM