Revised Highlands plan appears ecologically suspect to environmentalists

West Milford - The Pequannock River flows fast, clear, and fresh from its source on the northeast side of Hamburg Mountain. One of the most pristine of New Jersey’s rivers, the Pequannock is home to the native brown trout, and its watershed embraces land that supplies water to millions of New Jersey residents.

The Highlands Council’s new Regional Master Plan was designed to protect that water, but environmental groups in the Pequannock River watershed say that the plan doesn’t go nearly far enough and appears to do more to promote development than to conserve water.

Johns Lake, a one-acre lake in West Milford is the centerpiece of a 40-acre camp owned by the Montclair YMCA. The site is one of a number that the revised Highlands Council Master Plan has identified as appropriate for development.

“This one I can’t image how it would qualify,” said Rush Kushner of the Pequannock River Coalition. “This one is just off the charts.”

On the banks of the Pequannock River in Jefferson Township (Morris County) near a large beaver lodge is another site the plan has earmarked for building. Down the road in Butler, a narrowed Pequannock River cascades down a small waterfall near the site of an old millrace. Abutting the river on the near bank is an apartment complex of two-story brick buildings. On the far bank is a steep slope the crest of which was bought by the Passaic River Coalition to preserve it.

Describing the plan as an “academic exercise,” in which the planners failed to get their boots muddy by examining the lay of the land, Ella Filippone of the Passaic River Coalition, recently deplored the insensitivity of planners to the reality of West Milford’s chancy water supply. “The state never has done the real studies in the Highlands and in this area. They just don’t understand.”

Surprised and distressed by the possible effect of the plan on one of the state’s most sensitive watersheds, Kushner called for citizens and members of the press to join him and other environmentalists to see for themselves.

“What can the council have been thinking to place potential zones for receiving high-density development on or near river banks and over wellheads?” asked Kushner

Each area on the tour was identified on the master plan map as being a site to which landowners could transfer their development rights, known as TDR zones.

“This is the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds more examples,” said Robin O'Hearn of Skylands CLEAN.

The TDR program is a means to reimburse owners of land where development is prohibited by giving them a credit that they can sell to developers who wish to build in areas identified as suitable for clustered growth.

The plan gives towns financial incentives to agree to be “receiving areas” for the TDRs — thus allowing higher density development.

“We don’t have enough water to allow development,” said former West Milford Mayor Carl Richko. “With five reservoirs to serve Newark, we could say we have water, water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink.”

Residents in many West Milford neighborhoods have gone to extraordinary lengths, installing water-miser showers and toilets, then saving the first couple of gallons of shower water before it is warm enough and using it to water plants and fill toilet tanks.

Highlands Council Director Eileen Swan said it is a misconception to think the plan would encourage the creation of receiving zones in environmentally sensitive areas.

“The Highlands Council has conducted a preliminary GIS-based analysis to identify potential areas where there is available infrastructure. The designation of Receiving Zones is a voluntary process as specified in the Highlands Act,” Swan said in a written statement.

What’s more, Swan continued, it is false to believe that the plan would encourage growth in water deficit areas. Development that increases the deficits is prohibited.

“Growth may occur after a municipality has clearly proven that Highlands resources will be maintained and protected.”

Swan also explained that the map is only a means to show how communities could begin to consider the land, and said that an in-depth analysis would depend on the details communities provide when then revise their master plans to conform to the regional master plan to be adopted in the spring.

Speaking at a Highlands Council hearing in Paterson on Monday evening, Feb. 11, Kushner disputed Swan’s explanations.

“Sadly, experience has shown that in the Highlands, development occurs sooner or later wherever it is not prohibited. The Council freely admits that wetlands, floodplains, steep slopes, river corridors and many other features critical to water supply have been mapped into this zone. Again, the line between mandating growth in sensitive areas and allowing it to continue is so fine as to be nonexistent,” Kushner said.

He also called upon Swan and the council’s chairman, John Weingart, to resign.

“At this point, we [the Pequannock River Coalition] find the Council so utterly lacking in leadership and on a course so far removed from the legislative mandates of the Highlands Act that we call for the immediate resignation of Chairman John Weingart and Executive Director Eileen Swan.

The Pequannock River’s path

• Newark draws most of its water from Pequannock watershed.

• The Pequannock River rises out of the northeast slope of Hamburg Mountain in Vernon (Sussex County)

• The 32-mile -long Pequannock River winds southeast past Stockholm in Hardyston Township in Sussex County.

• The river then turns east-southeast and rushes along the border of Morris and Passaic Counties, north of Green Pond Mountain past Butler and Bloomingdale before joining the Ramapo River in Pequannock to form the Pompton River.

• The Pequannock eventually ends in the Oak Ridge Reservoir, which supplies water to Newark.