Preserving the Highlands
Letter to the Editor
Bergen Record, February 14, 2008

Regarding "Highlands plan puzzles environmentalists" (Page L-1, Feb. 8):

Highlands Council Executive Director Eileen Swan's response to our tour of Highlands sites mapped as growth zones was eye-opening. The council staff has done three years of analysis to create a plan that defines precisely where development can and cannot occur. Yet Swan states that the maps underlying the plan are "merely the results of consultants' preliminary work" and that they are "showing where we can look to start this process."

With the plan ready for adoption, it seems a little late in the game to be using "preliminary" (and obviously flawed) data and mapping. Our organization, along with several other groups, pointed out mapping errors that placed growth zones over environmentally sensitive areas when the first draft was released last year. The council staff pooh-poohed our concerns then as well, claiming that the environmental constraints underlying the planned community zones would limit development on those sites. Now we learn from Swan that the constraint analysis has yet to be performed. Which is it?

These prior mapping errors are compounded with the addition of transfer-of-development-rights receiving zones, often located in residential back yards or on the banks of Category 1 waterways. Residents should contact their Highlands council representatives, such as Freeholders Tahesha Way of Passaic County, Elizabeth Calabrese of Bergen and Jack Schrier of Morris, and tell them that a plan based on such mapping is unacceptable. Rather than "pencils down," it's "back to the drawing board."

Robin O'Hearn
Ringwood, Feb. 8

The writer is executive director of Skylands CLEAN Inc.