COM 0208.106 2004-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Public Safety • When adequate open space and parks are provided in urban and residential environments, crime drops9. • The Center for Disease Control and the U.S. House of Representatives have both formally recognized the link between open space/parks and crime in reports and Iegislations,lz • It is always more cost-effective to prevent crime. Open space and parks prevent and decrease crime. Community Health • The Center for Disease Control recognizes that the community planning that includes open spaces and parks directly benefits community health and decreases community health costs 6,10,11 • In reviewing studies of social impacts, Dr. John Crompton at Texas A&M University noted that open space and parks help alleviate social problems by preventing crime, supporting healthy lifestyles, reducing environmental stress, and helping to meet the psychological needs of the unemployed and underemployed8. Infrastructure • The Koolau Watershed on Oahu provides an estimated benefit of $83.7 to $394 million in water quality protection and filtration. In other words, it would cost $83.7 to $394 million to construct the infrastructure and provide the services to protect and purify water that the watershed currently does for free8. • To provide the same level of ground water quality that the Koolau watershed does for free, $4.5 to 8.5 billion dollars in infrastructure and services would need to be built and expended8. And the watershed provides $82 million dollars worth of climate control infrastructure for free8. • It is estimated that to design and build storm water control systems to handle the increase in peak flows for all the treed open space that has been lost in the Puget Sound between 1972 and 1996 will cost $5.9 billion dollars2. • The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers is spending $160 million dollars to demolish homes and return part of the Napa River flood plain to open space because open space is the most effective infrastructure for storm and flood water control. Removing this land from open space has cost approximately $500 million in damage2. • New York City found it would cost $6 billion to $8 billion to build a filtration plant for its water supply if its upstate watershed lands were developed, but it would cost only $1.5 billion to purchase these lands and preserve them as open space2. • In the Puget Sound region, trees remove 78 million pounds of pollutants per year. It would cost $19.5 million if the air were cleaned by industrial meansZ. These are only a few examples of how open space directly decreases infrastructure costs. Page ? of ~