National Association of Conservation Districts

Resource Concerns

Over the years, as people moved from rural areas to cities and suburbs, the landscape changed. This urban growth has affected natural resources, including surface and ground water quality and quantity, air quality, vegetation, and wildlife.

Water Quality and Quantity

District Forester Jerry Stensing and Conservation Corps workers in Bemidji, Minnesota conduct a spruce budworm evaluation.

The water quality and quantity of urban, developing and interface areas are greatly affected by human infrastructures and activities. Point sources, such as industry and sewers, generally are regulated and treated. However, water can be degraded by nonpoint sources including sedimentation from construction sites and roadwork, pollutants from parking lots and streets and excess pesticides and nutrients from lawns and golf courses. These pollutants are particularly damaging when heavy rains cause sewer systems to overflow, dumping untreated flows into nearby water bodies. Water quantity can also be an issue, particularly in areas of the nation where demand exceeds limited water supplies.

Maintaining water quality and quantity involves controlling erosion and sedimentation, managing storm water and flooding, reducing pollution from yards and streets, reducing water usage and recycling and reclaiming used water.

Air Quality

Population density, mirrored by a multitude of vehicles driving increasingly greater distances each day, affects air quality. Road work and construction can do so also by exposing soil particles to the wind. Enhancing air quality requires improvement in transit opportunities, establishment and maintenance of trees and other vegetation and erosion control.

Green Infrastructure

Cities grew without much thought given to the valuable role green space and plants play in water and air quality, temperature mitigation and wildlife habitat. The gray infrastructure of buildings, utilities, parking lots and roadways was primary consideration. Much less emphasis was given to the ‘green infrastructure’, the open, vegetated areas that could absorb and filter water runoff and air pollution and provide wildlife habitat.

In many areas, people and businesses have moved from central cities to the suburbs. They abandoned buildings and empty lots, which became unsafe and unsightly. Some businesses left properties affected by industrial contaminants now referred to as brownfields. As subsequent suburbs grew even farther out, older suburbs became blighted neighborhoods surrounding depressed cities and abandoned retail areas.