The cities of Dayton and Cincinnati have grown into one another in a rush of development

Residents complain is wiping out farmland and overtaxing water, traffic, and school systems.2 Growth has been particularly dramatic in Ohio’s fastest growing county, Warren County just north of Columbus, which grew 64 percent between 1990 and 2000.3
 
Population Growth
Ohio increased by five percent, or 506,000 people, between 1990 and 2000, bringing its population to almost 11.4 million people.

Between 1990 and 2000, Delaware County was the fastest growing county in the state, increasing by 64 percent. During that period, the immigrant population in the county increased by 152 percent.4
 
Ohio’s foreign-born population increased 31 percent during the 1990s. Between 1990 and 2000, Ohio gained 80,000 immigrants, bringing the total number of foreign-born residents in the state to 339,000.

Demonstrating the impact of recent policies of mass immigration, 42 percent of Ohio’s immigrant population has arrived in the state since 1990.

The increase in the foreign-born population during the 1990s accounted for 16 percent of the state’s overall population increase during the decade.

About 953,000 people in Ohio are immigrants or the children of immigrants, eight percent of the state’s population.5

Immigration and Your Community
FAIR has immigration data for local communities in Ohio as well. See our full listing of pages about Ohio for information about your locality.
Trends for the Future
The Census Bureau projects that Ohio’s population will grow by four percent between 2000 and 2025, to 11.7 million.

Impact on Environment and Quality of Life
Water: Ohio communities are already in competition for water supplies. In Warren County, Mason drew so much water in 2001 that wells in neighboring Turtlecreek Township started to go dry.7

The growth of Columbus’s suburbs is taxing its water delivery system. The area’s water system, is expected to need an additional 60 million gallons of water a day—a 42 percent increase—to meet the region’s needs by 2020.8 Already, Columbus is the biggest polluter of the Scioto River, with almost 3 billion gallons of raw sewage per year following into the river. Columbus residents’ sewer fees have been prioritized for building new sewers into the countryside instead of maintenance of the existing system in the city.9

In fast-growing Fairfield County, the town of Pickerington has had to undertake a four-million-dollar expansion of its water and sewage systems to prepare for the doubling of its population with the next 15 to 20 years.10 In Lebanon, where growth is expected to push daily demand to eight million gallons a day—far above the system’s current capacity of 3.5 million gallons a day—the city plans to spend $96 million to upgrade its water and sewage systems.11