Planning and Community Health Research Center

Clean Water and Air

Providing safe and clean drinking water, natural and recreational waterways, and indoor and outdoor air quality is essential for a healthy environment and healthy people.

Aspects of the land use, transportation, housing, and food systems as well as planning policies and practices significantly impact water and air quality. Urban and agricultural runoff, paved roads and surfaces, stormwater management, municipal water systems, and factories all contribute to the pollution of municipal water supplies.

Land development and transportation patterns as well as agricultural practices, power plants, refineries, chemical plants and other industrial practices contribute to the accumulation of green house gases — such as ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and methane — which affect the health of people and place through illness and climate change.

Planners play an important role in providing clean and safe water and protecting people from illnesses caused by water contamination through:

• land-use controls that protect source water form potential contamination
• reduction of impervious surfaces
• development of landscapes that act as natural filtration systems
• control of erosion and sedimentation through sustainable land management and agricultural practices

Planners also create and develop communities that support compact and mixed-use development, street connectivity, and pedestrian and bicycle transportation and that support healthy building design and indoor air quality policies.