Highlands plan gets additional critics

More than 5 million people -- more than half of the state's population -- get their drinking water from the Highlands, a 1,250-square-mile swath of vistas, forested ridges and reservoirs stretching across seven counties in northern New Jersey. Most of those people do not live in the Highlands.

For the most part, those folks have not come to Highlands Council meetings or hearings on a plan to develop and preserve the region. Those who regularly attend tend to be environmentalists who argue the plan caters too much to growth, developers who say the plan limits growth and others who decry the lack of compensation for property owners who no longer can develop or borrow against their property.

Yesterday's second public hear ing, held at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, largely followed that pattern. But there were -- for the first time -- a few speakers who represented people who actually use Highlands water. Residents of Paterson and Newark who are affiliated with environmental groups spoke out, many for the first time.

"Our watersheds are already de pleted," said Priscilla Lainez, a Paterson resident and Newark teacher. "To allow people to develop in that area will cause them to be depleted even more."

"We already have so much pollution in Newark," said Arif Rahat, a 16-year-old student of Newark Science High School and participant in a youth-leadership program run by the Greater Newark Conser vancy. "If we do not protect our water now, how are we supposed to protect it later?"

Protecting that water supply was the goal of the Highlands Act, which the state Legislature passed in 2004. The act limited development in the region and created the Highlands Council, a panel charged with creating a regional master plan that would dictate what the area would look like for decades to come.

But writing the plan -- which covers parts of Morris, Sussex, Warren, Somerset, Hunterdon, Ber gen and Passaic counties -- has been a complicated, two-year effort that has provoked criticism from all sides.

"After hundreds of hours of tes timony, you published a plan that continues to be unfunded," Howard Wolfe, vice president of the Community Builders' Association, told the council last night. "There are few opportunities to accommo date local and regional growth and economic development in any way."

Robin O'Hearn, of the environmental group Skylands CLEAN, took an opposing view, saying the master plan had "policies with no teeth" and used "creative math and shoddy science."

"With the act, we were promised protection," she said. "With the plan, we got bait and switch."

O'Hearn's comments were echoed by dozens of environmentalists, who called the plan's language too ambiguous and called for clearer standards and require ments.

And William Griffin of the State Board of Agriculture urged the council to identify a funding source for implementing the plan before the council adopts it. The Highlands Act had hampered farmers' ability to borrow against their land, he said.

"We have many farmers that have the same land for generation after generation," he said. "They cannot continue to farm this land if they can't go to the bank ... and (borrow) against the equity that has been lost."

The final public hearing on the plan is tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. in Voorhees High School in Glen Gardner. The public comment period on the final regional master plan closes Feb. 28.