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Sprawl generally follows a predictable pattern: As it diffuses from the urban toward the rural sprawl carries wealth with it, temporarily enriching its new location while leaving departed areas feeling the pinch. Initially, a town may absorb new residents into its structure with little or no impact on taxes or services. Houses may be built on existing roads and school space may be adequate; property taxes may even decline. But as this painless, almost imperceptible growth spreads, it reaches a point where school and town office facilities become inadequate, where snow plows and other road maintenance equipment must be added, where a new fire station and equipment are needed. Town water and sewer services, and law enforcement may become issues. Taxes can go nowhere but up, and some residents choose to move farther into the country, perpetuating the cycle.

According to the Maine State Planning Office: From 1975 to 1995, while the state's school population was dropping by 27,000 students, $727 million was spent on new school construction, about half of which can be attributed to building schools to accommodate sprawl. And, because students are more spread out and new schools are located where few can walk to them, we now spend $54 million to get kids to and from school compared with $8.7 million in 1970.

Windham is currently struggling with school space/financial problems as a result of sprawl, and there is no shortage of other examples: Competing with Windham for severely limited state funds, Cumberland and North Yarmouth are seeking their towns' approval of nearly $27 million for school construction because enrollment in SAD 51 has grown 18% in the past four years--and is projected to grow another 16% in the next five; and several weeks ago Falmouth voted to build a new $21 million high school

Fifteen years ago, Portland's school enrollment was 8,100, it is now 8,001, a 1% decrease. So taxpayers get hit twice--once to build new schools in the countryside and again to maintain older, underused urban schools.

Other major economic costs of sprawl include road construction and maintenance. During the '80s, while Maine's population grew less than 10%, total miles driven increased almost 60%, and highway expenditures increased by about one-third. Since the mid '80s municipalities have accepted responsibility for over 100 miles of new roadway per year.

And sprawl is increasing costs to major industries. For example, fragmented woodlands create costly access problems for foresters, and drainage alterations resulting from houselot clearing and grading, road building, and septic tank construction affect everything from access to timber regrowth: Farmers are faced with the one-two punch of rising property taxes and developers offering top dollar for their land. And as farmland gives way to development, not only farms are lost but, also, sources of locally produced products, scenic views, agriculture support businesses, and a way of life.

A major state industry, outdoor recreation, is knocking at the taxpayers' door as another huge economic cost looms on the horizon: The state will need to compete with developers for land in order to protect it. Conservation and recreational groups, such as snowmobilers and sportsmen, are finding common ground in protecting Maine's natural assets from pollution and development on one hand, and maintaining public access to its forests for recreational use on the other. (In 1996, hunting alone generated well over $300 million in retail sales in Maine.) Spurred by fear of sprawl, as well as alarm at recent sales of millions of timberland acres in northern Maine, those groups are banding together to try to build support for a major state land bond, and they are finding cautious support from Governor King and some lawmakers. The problem? Where would those funds come from?

Society as a whole feels the impact of sprawl as it transforms urban centers and the countryside. As middle-class families move away from urban areas, many of the needy--poor, elderly, disabled remain, while the tax base erodes. City centers contain 80% of all subsidized housing, and have poverty rates double those of fast growing outlying communities. Urban areas are losing neighborhood schools, post offices, department stores, even churches.

And while urban centers struggle with change, rural society, too, is changing forever as working communities become bedroom communities and land is transformed from productive activities (farming, forestry, gravel excavation, and outdoor recreation such as hunting an snowmobiling) to consumptive activities (buying and selling houselots), and impersonal giants like Rite Aid, Wal-Mart and McDonalds force traditional mom and pop businesses out of existence.

Maine's heritage appears to be at the mercy of the silent, spreading dilemma of sprawl. What remains of that heritage for future generations depends on what actions are taken to control sprawl's environmental, aesthetic, economic and social costs.