Saturday Mailbox

A time to curb the ravages of reckless growth

It is about time citizens and elected officials took action to curb irresponsible growth ("Suburbs in fight to curb growth," May 18).

As a parent of a fifth-grader who was shunted along with the entire Mount Airy Elementary fifth-grade class to a portable village behind Mount Airy Middle School and of a second-grader who studies in a portable village behind Mount Airy Elementary School, I have had it with the greed of homebuilders and of the elected officials who enabled them.

As an urban planner and an activist, beginning in 1998 I offered a fact-based preview of the future of Mount Airy schools to the Carroll County Board of Education and the County Commission.

I was informed that local schools were under capacity and enrollment would continue to decline. I questioned whether planned growth in the town (more than 1,000 new homes within five years) was being considered, and was told that new homes would be considered only after they were built and occupied.

Fast forward five years -- and now in our town of 7,500 people, 18 portable classrooms house nearly 500 children (enough children to fill an entire school). By November 2001, when county officials finally agreed that a second elementary school was needed, the situation was out of control. The new school opens in two years, but it will not solve middle school or high school overcrowding.

Citizens are furious and want the home-building industry held accountable for the impacts of development.

Our town, county and state elected and appointed officials must take whatever drastic planning measures are needed to put the children first and be creative and forward-thinking in designing school planning processes so that the sort of problems we have had are not repeated.

Michele Johnson

Mount Airy

Growing population cuts quality of life

Citing overcrowded schools and lunch shifts that begin at 10 a.m. in Harford County, local Councilman Dion F. Guthrie said, "We can't just keep going on like this" ("Suburbs in fight to curb growth," May 18).

But this is exactly what can be expected since there is no way to curb overdevelopment so long as population keeps rising. And the fact the counties surrounding Baltimore City have grown by 300,000 residents over the past decade or so while the city has lost only 100,000 people shows that the problem is not simply the result of city residents relocating to the suburbs.

Nor can the problem be viewed simply as "regional." Rather, it is part of a nationwide population explosion that is expected to drive our population from some 290 million at present to more than 400 million by mid-century.

Such rapid and uncontrolled growth in numbers will dwarf the development problems presently experienced by suburban counties. It will tax water supplies, increase energy costs, drive up pollution and diminish quality of life simply because of population density.

In this context, rewriting local zoning rules and limiting development are only stopgap measures that may put off the day of reckoning but will not prevent it.

What we need is an effective national population policy that will seriously address the consequences of unlimited population growth.

Howard Bluth

Baltimore

Today's epidemics have behavioral roots

Congratulations to The Sun for speaking plainly about the enormous health effects and costs associated with the epidemic of obesity in the United States ("Carrots before sticks," editorial, May 15).

The surgeon general estimates that more than 250,000 Americans die prematurely from obesity each year. Only the smoking epidemic is a greater source of morbidity and mortality.

A century ago in Baltimore, the most dangerous epidemics were infectious diseases: tuberculosis, polio, influenza and diphtheria. Society responded with research and teaching initiatives that gave rise to new basic sciences: microbiology, genetics and immunology. Johns Hopkins University created its School of Hygiene and Public Health to join the fight.

We defeated those epidemics and created essential laboratory and medical technologies that can also fight emerging infections including HIV/AIDS and SARS.

But as The Sun's obesity editorial illustrated, the most dangerous epidemics today are behavioral: smoking, obesity, alcohol and drug abuse, violence and AIDS.

To fight these epidemics, we need the social and behavioral equivalents of vaccines, antibiotics and laboratory tests. We need new prevention and intervention strategies built on legislation, communication, organization and education.

It is time for us all to join the new fight, and send smoking, obesity and violence the way of diphtheria, tuberculosis and polio.

Dr. Scott L. Zeger

Baltimore

The writer is the chairman of the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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