By Paula Mavroudis quotes LaVon Griffieon

Daily Iowan, Iowa City, IA

April 17, 2002

An environmental group dedicated to preventing misuse of Iowa farmland said urban sprawl is a chronic problem in Iowa, and it will lobby state lawmakers to prevent the phenomenon. Rep. Ed Fallon, D-Des Moines, Iowa, and LaVon Griffeion of the environmental group 1000 Friends of Iowa spoke at University of Iowa Tuesday about their efforts to eliminate sprawl, which involves destruction of farmland to accommodate growing cities.

"It's really sad what urban sprawl has done to many of our communities," Fallon said. "We are losing the soul of small towns and replacing them with video stores and no sidewalks." The duo spoke as part of the UI Environmental Coalition-funded Earth Week activities. Fallon, executive director of 1000 Friends and a state representative, is pushing for a bill requiring cities and counties to collaborate on their next 20 years of growth. Its goals balance establishing a strategic-development plan and ensuring free development, he said. "We have growing support for the bill," he said.

Fallon and Griffeion, president and founder of 1000 Friends, used slides, speech and song to describe what they called the "growing cancer for farmland."

Griffeion has dedicated her efforts to combating the phenomenon in the nine years since she established the group. "When I first started farming, Ankeny was about three miles away from our farmland, but it just keeps getting closer with all of the building and consuming the farmland," she said.

Griffeion owns 1,100 acres of farmland outside of Ankeny, Iowa, growing primarily soybeans and corn; the farm has been in her family for five generations, she said.

If sprawl continues, she said, "generations of sweat" will be lost. As cities grow closer to farms, a danger arises for nonfarm children who don't understand the nature of farm equipment and migh-t be susceptible toinjuries. The situation consistently poses challenges when city and farm life converge, she said.

Small towns also are diminishing in response to urban sprawl, the activists said. A slide show depicted barren, four-lane highways flanked by fast-food restaurants and Blockbuster Videos. Many zoning ordinances prohibit an "old-town" style of building that provides individuality for a town, they said.