Environmental Protection Acts actually hurting the environment?? (2014, homes)

[gottaq]

Are environmental protection acts actually hurting the environment? here's my logic. western new jersey is pretty rural and spread out. yet it's under an hour from manhattan. how can this be? it's by design. there are many laws protecting nature there and prohibiting building. and sure while this sounds great, what it has done is push the population out into eastern PA. so now the poconos and lehigh valley are becoming very congested. and many, not all but many, of these people commute far into NJ and even NYC for work. and they are putting more fossil fuels into the air. so while the protection acts are saving parks and trees, aren't they doing more harm to the actual planet as a whole? same situation in frederick maryland... because montgomery county has certain land protected, frederick has exploded. and people are driving much further commutes to go towards DC. what do you guys think?

[ki0eh]

In PA stormwater rules and traffic studies also often push development out into greenfields. I once worked with a site that was 4 acres of paving around an abandoned commercial building. The proposal was to replace it with a convenience store with 20 vehicle fueling positions and a car wash. The local stormwater rules required the predevelopment runoff rate to be computed as "meadow, good condition" despite being entirely paved. The 20 vehicle fueling positions pushed the ITE traffic generation rates into the stratosphere. Between extra lanes and stormwater basins the developer practically didn't have a site left. At least there now seems to be some wider recognition of issues with the ITE manual. A Widely Used Planning Manual Tends to Recommend Building Far More Roads Than Necessary - CityLab

The NPDES Phase II stormwater construction general permit process has also proven too all-encompassing for smaller sites as it is now applied to as low as 1 acre of earth disturbance. The solutions for say, 1.2 acre sites are somewhat prescriptive by necessity but now the developer (which term includes someone running pipes to existing homes in a neighborhood) has to fill out many more pages of documentation, pay more fees, wait longer for approvals, all of which drives the cost up for no value added. The old 5 acre threshold was a bit too big but 1 acre is too small, if they would just make it 1 hectare (2.47 acres) that could be a simple fix.