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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

Traffic:
As population growth put more traffic on the roads, the average commute for Ohio residents increased eleven percent during the 1990s, from 21 minutes to 23 minutes in 2000.12 Vehicle travel on Ohio’s highways increased 25 percent between 1989 and 1999, and 27 percent of the state’s freeways are congested.13

Traffic congestion amounts to approximately 250 million hours of lost time for Ohio motorists and will increase to nearly 460 million hours of delay by 2020. This lost productivity costs Ohio businesses more than $500 million annually and will increase to more than $915 million by 2030.14

Cincinnati area planners have estimated that it will cost between $815 million and $1 billion to expand existing transportation routes to handle the 30 percent increase in traffic expected by 2030.15 In 2002, 25 percent of residents of Columbus listed traffic congestion as their number one concern about the area; it was the first time traffic had surpassed crime as the top concern.16

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