APA Policy Guides

Question 1

What is the APA Policy Guide on Billboard Controls?

Answer 1

In 1978 Congress adopted an amendment to the Highway Beautification Act which ties the hands of local governments that want to remove nonconforming billboards along federal highways, making them pay for billboard owners for removal of nonconforming billboards.

The federal government is supposed to meet 75 percent of the cost of billboard removal, but Congress has not appropriated funds for this purpose since 1982. This is a major obstacle to billboard regulation because the removal of nonconforming billboards is essential to an effective billboard control program.

Local governments can and do require the removal of other signs without cash compensation.

APA promotes federal legislation that restores to local governments the authority to require the removal of billboards and other signs through amortization and other means consistent with the law and constitution of the particular state.

Question 2

What is the APA Policy Guide on Climate Change?

Answer 2

Mitigation: minimizing the extent of the future impact created by climate change, primarily by reducing GHG emissions.

Adaptation: The approach for building community resilience by addressing climate-induced drought, flooding, sea-level rise, thawing permafrost, storm surge, and the many other impacts of climate change.

5 strategic points of intervention” to be pursued at the state and local levels with regard to energy and climate challenges:

1.Long-Range Community Visioning and Goal Setting
2. Plan Making
3. Standards, Policies and Incentives
4. Development Work
5. Public Investment

Policy Framework

1. Policy responses to climate change need to be based on the best possible science.
2. Many of the specific impacts of climate change are highly regional and even local in nature. Therefore, climate change policies cannot be based on a one-size-fits-all approach.
3. Adapting to climate change is just as important as mitigating it.
4. Planners will need new communication tools to explain climate change issues and maintain the focus on long-term adaptation and mitigation responses. Citizen participation and engagement is vital to the success of climate change efforts.

Question 3

What is the APA Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning?

Answer 3

Reasons why food system is important to planning:
Recognition that food system activities take up a significant amount of urban and regional land

Awareness that planners can play a role to help reduce the rising incidence of hunger on the one hand, and obesity on the other
Understanding that the food system represents an important part of community and regional economies
Awareness that the food Americans eat takes a considerable amount of fossil fuel energy to produce, process, transport, and dispose of
Understanding that farmland in metropolitan areas, and therefore the capacity to produce food for local and regional markets, is being lost at a strong pace
Understanding that pollution of ground and surface water, caused by the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture adversely affects drinking water supplies
Awareness that access to healthy foods in low-income areas is an increasing problem for which urban agriculture can offer an important solution
Recognition that many benefits emerge from stronger community and regional food systems

Two overarching goals are offered for planners:
Help build stronger, sustainable, and more self-reliant community and regional food systems, and,
Suggest ways the industrial food system may interact with communities and regions to enhance benefits such as economic vitality, public health, ecological sustainability, social equity, and cultural diversity.

Seven general policies:
Support comprehensive food planning process at the community and regional levels;
Support strengthening the local and regional economy by promoting local and regional food systems;
Support food systems that improve the health of the region’s residents;
Support food systems that are ecologically sustainable;
Support food systems that are equitable and just;
Support food systems that preserve and sustain diverse traditional food cultures of Native American and other ethnic minority communities;
Support the development of state and federal legislation to facilitate community and regional food planning discussed in general policies #1 through #6.

Question 4

What is the APA Policy Guide on Endangered Species and Habitat Protection?

Answer 4

1. The preservation and enhancement of wildlife and its habitat cannot be distinguished from preservation of human habitat and so is a core function of government. As a core function, habitat preservation should be reflected in the entire process of planning, and managing growth and development.
2. Effective habitat conservation requires the participation of all levels of government. State and federal agencies should establish baseline data and protection criteria as well as provide technical assistance to local governments and landowners.
3. Ideally, species should not be allowed to become imperiled to the point of endangerment, but when this does occur, legal mechanisms such as the Endangered Species Act should be in place to provide the protection needed to prevent extinction.
4. Currently, most laws focus on individual species after they have become threatened or endangered. This is usually too late to stop the decline or even extinction of the species.
5. While the existing ESA has as its purpose “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved…”, there are no mechanisms in the statute to accomplish this.
6. There is tremendous regional variability related to the implementation of the ESA which must be recognized. This is based, in part, on the number of endangered species that are known to occur regionally, their life history requirements (e.g., migratory vs. non–migratory), the amount of available habitat and land in federal ownership, the number of federal actions, and the existence of state laws that extend protection beyond that of the ESA. Also important are regional economic concerns, and variability in implementation of the ESA across the nation.
7. Although Habitat Conservation Plans are helpful in encouraging private—public partnerships, additional incentives are needed to involve private landowners in the protection of the larger amounts of land required for habitat protection.
8. The best science practices for Habitat Conservation Plans will require coordination between technical expert resource agencies and locally knowledgeable municipal governments for planning to satisfy not only stringent ESA requirements but also acceptable community standards which thereby affects HCP implementation.
9. A “No Surprises” rule was applied to Habitat Conservation Plans to provide landowners assurances that once approved, their Plan will not change for the life of the Plan. While this eliminates arbitrary and capricious demands for Plan revisions, it also creates a static Plan that may easily fail.

General Policies

APA supports policies that are designed to plan for the preservation of wildlife habitat in order to minimize the possibility of plant and animal species becoming endangered or extinct.

Valuable wildlife habitat resources should be identified at the local and regional levels at the earliest stages of planning. Habitat protection ideally should be as much an element of a master plan as housing and transportation.

Emphasis should be on protecting ecosystems on a comprehensive basis instead of relying on a narrow, single-species, piecemeal approach.

Question 5

What is the APA Policy Guide on Solid and Hazardous Waste Management?

Answer 5

The location of waste management facilities should be part of a comprehensive planning process that includes the opportunity for meaningful public participation and public consensus. The planning process and regulatory process should also address issues of Environmental Justice.

Findings

1. In recent years, financial and environmental costs to dispose of municipal solid waste are beginning to overwhelm North America’s local and state governments. Public attitudes about garbage are also changing in response to new information about costs and practices of solid waste disposal. As our disposal sites are filled, new sites become harder to locate and standards for landfill design require modifications in facilities, resulting in disposal becoming more complex, controversial, and expensive.
2. Environmental concerns deal not only in locating new waste management facilities, but also in posing the question of who is at risk of being exposed to the waste.
3. Although federal and state laws distinguish between “non-hazardous” and hazardous waste, the lines between the two categories are sometimes blurred. Household waste may contain hazardous constituents that pose environmental and health impacts if not properly discarded.
4. Medical and nuclear wastes need to be dealt with in a responsible fashion that does not jeopardize human or ecosystem health.

General Policy

APA supports managing solid wastes (including hazardous and medical wastes) in accordance with the aforementioned hierarchy: reduce, reuse, recycle, waste to energy, incinerate, and landfill.

Question 6

What is the APA Policy Guide on Water?

Answer 6

• A planning practice that employs an integrated, systems-oriented, comprehensive approach to water management.
• Innovative land-use planning and urban designs to improve and protect water environments.
• New and improved professional practices to manage water more sustainably and equitably.
• Awareness of the potential for inequity in access to water supply, water pricing that is not sensitive to ability to pay (and yet does not fully account for the full cost of water), and environmental justice issues where discharge of pollution to waterways occurs and where there is insufficient attention to flood mitigation.
  sustainable land use patterns coupled with the efficient use of scarce and/or oversubscribed water supplies
• Sustainable land use patterns coupled with the efficient use of scarce and/or oversubscribed water supplies
• water planning to ensure that development and future water needs are consistent with availability and supply
• Water infrastructure designed, built, and maintained, to protect and conserve and reuse water resources to support our long-term economic future and overall well-being.