Houses are going up less than 1/2 mile from our house. It’s on Norm Strohl’s old farm, bought by a developer, and subdivided into 34 lots. The large, new, and unnecessary St. Luke’s Hospital is being built seven miles to the west in Franklin Township, and with it will come increased demand for housing. These houses are being built miles from any store with no public transportation. Each has its own well and septic system, a long-term recipe for disaster. Suburban housing adds to pesticides, impervious surfaces, and lawns that are environmental deserts. Residents will demand more services, create more garbage, destroy more natural habitats.
Our 23 acres will never be developed. When our daughter inherits it, she will also not develop it. Our farm is part of the Pennsylvania Farmland Preservation program, and it will be farmland (or open space) in perpetuity. We have one of the 5,700 farms that have been preserved. 1,400 farms are on the waiting list.
Unfortunately, while the state is doing well on farmland preservation in comparison to other states, housing has eaten up 244,000 acres between 2001 and 2016. This is not good land use planning nor good policy to mitigate global warming. It is, however, good for making developers rich.
Statistics are from Dick Wanner, “Farm Preservation Report Marks State’s Progress,” Lancaster Farming, (June 20, 2020), p. A10.
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