The new state "Task Force on the Future for Growth and Development" held its first meeting in Annapolis yesterday, and got a taste of what they're up against.

The 21-member panel (a few members seemed to be absent) got briefings from Maryland Planning Secretary Richard E. Hall and his staff on how growth is currently managed, how sprawl continues despite Smart Growth, and how the state's population is greying and becoming more diverse, even as housing becomes less affordable throughout much of the state.

"We often grow now differently than we used to," Hall said, showing the task force how the compact urban neighborhoods of the 1940s and '50s have given way to ever-spreading suburbia.  He gave them the familiar statistics about how three-fourths of the new homes built since Smart Growth took effect in 1997 have been inside designated growth areas, but the other fourth are consuming three-fourths of all the land devoted to housing. 

More troubling, he projected that if current land use patterns persist, the state will lose another 650,00 acres to development. He pointed out that a recent report from the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general warned that poorly managed growth was undermining efforts to restore Chesapeake Bay.

As if that's not enough to worry about, the task force heard that more people are coming this way, while those that are here are getting older. Maryland's overall population growth has slowed, but the state still should add 1.1 million more people by 2030 - driven in part by immigrants moving here and more babies getting born, explained MDP's Mark Goldstein. 

Though Maryland's in no danger of becoming Florida, by 2030, nearly one in five people here will be 65 or older.   While they're getting older, many people also seem to be moving out of state, or from county to county, Goldstein explained.  He suggested that the migration was linked to rising home prices, flashing a map showing how sales of $300,000-plus homes has spread across much of the state in recent years.

Del. Virginia P. Clagett, an Anne Arundel County Democrat on the task force, later called the three-hour skull session "fascinating," particularly the info on movements of families around and out of the state. She said she's worried about the impact of military base growth on her county, where some boosters predict Fort Meade could add upwards of 22,000 jobs over the next several years.

Doing something smart about all this won't be easy, she acknowledged. 

"It's one thing to know what's happening. It's another to correct it," Clagett said.