As sprawl increases our reliance on cars and driving, it makes our air dirtier and less healthy. Cars, trucks and buses are the biggest source of cancer- causing air pollution, spewing more than 12 billion pounds of toxic chemicals each year, or almost 50 pounds per person. Each year more than 100,000 acres of wetlands are destroyed, in large part to build sprawling new developments. Since wetlands can remove up to 90 percent of the pollutants in water, wetlands destruction leads directly to polluted water. Sprawl worsens the damage from killer floods.
Sprawl increases the risk of flooding.
Development pressures lead to building on floodplains and the destruction of wetlands, natural flood-absorbing sponges. Much of this flooding occurred in places where weak zoning laws allowed developers to drain wetlands and build in floodplains. Sprawl destroys parks, farms, and open space. Sprawl destroys more than one million acres of parks, farms and open space each year. This threatens America's productive farmland, and turns our cherished parks and open spaces into strip malls and freeways.