A 25-story, privately owned steel tower peering over the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1997 struck then Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as a glaring example of how private property rights can negatively impact public land.
A 25-story, privately owned steel tower peering over the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1997 struck then Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as a glaring example of how private property rights can negatively impact public land. He and other conservationists fought to have the tower demolished. Years later, he revisited the battlefield to the sounds of a congressionally approved explosion that signaled the tower's destruction.
The tower and all Civil War battlefields are symbols of the continuing problems between growing cities, shrinking open space, developers and land conservationists, Babbitt says.
"Should the national interests of all Americans in preserving this sacred site be left exclusively to the discretion of a local planning commission?" Babbitt writes in his new book, "Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America," published by Island Press.
"Sprawl is erasing the distinction between the built environment and the natural environment," Babbitt said in a news release. "And both the quality of urban life and the integrity of our natural ecosystems are declining."
What's needed, he writes, is a comprehensive national land-use plan that protects local control and still preserves the beauty of America's undeveloped country.
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He's treading the ultrasensitive ground of property rights, growth and land conservation. Babbitt brings to the debate his more than three decades as a conservationist and public servant. He uses his experience in hammering out land protection legislation from the Florida Everglades to Tucson, Ariz., as success stories.
Babbitt also writes about issues that New Mexico wrestles with: scarce water, rapidly growing urban populations and shrinking open space. He will be in Santa Fe on Thursday for a KSFR radio interview and a book signing at Garcia Street Books.
Babbitt served as interior secretary from 1993 to 2001 under President Clinton. He was governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987. He's now an attorney in Washington, D.C.
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Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
