News from Skylands CLEAN, Inc.

June 11, 2008

Advocates: Water supply threatened

At Splitrock Reservoir, they protest revisions to Highlands master plan

By Michael Daigle
Daily Record

ROCKAWAY TWP. -- Environmentalists claimed Tuesday that changes proposed for the Highlands Regional Master Plan would weaken the document intended to govern land use in the region and would further threaten the region's water supply.

With Splitrock Reservoir as a backdrop, members of five organizations said that the revisions to the master plan, due to be adopted by the state Highlands Council by July 17, would allow more water to be drawn from watersheds that have water deficits; allow more hard surfaces to be built in areas that are known to recharge groundwater; encourage "cluster development" on farmland; allow the adoption of weaker pollution standards for nitrates, which can promote plant growth; and cautioned that more attention must be paid to the historic resources of the Highlands.

The Highlands Act was intended to protect water sources and was signed into law in 2004. Since then, the Highlands Council and its staff has been working on the master plan. Builders' groups contend the rules governing development will be too strict but environmental groups say the rules should be toughened up before the document is adopted.

The environmental groups said they were concerned about the build-out analysis released recently by the Highlands Council which, said Ross Kushner, executive director of the Pequannock River Coalition, would allow greater building densities. The Highlands Council must "stop growth on sensitive lands that support public water supplies and stop growth in water deficit areas," he said, referring to areas where water use exceeds supply.

Julia Somers, executive director of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, said the groups are "extremely concerned that decisions by the Highlands Council added important weaknesses to the master plan."

She said the plan must protect the water supply in a region where the majority of 183 sub-watersheds are in water deficits. The Parsippany watershed, Somers said, has a daily 7 million gallon deficit.

Jeff Tittel, executive director of the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, who did not attend the press event, said in a telephone interview that the changes to the master plan are so damaging his organization plans to ask Gov. Jon Corzine to veto the master plan if it is approved without further changes.

But Eileen Swan, executive director of the Highlands Council, said the changes in master plan strengthen provisions in the regulations that would govern the region.

While some building would be allowed in both the Highlands preservation area, where most development has been banned, and in the planning area, where building would be allowed, the master plan would sharply reduce the amount of construction across the region, Swan said.

Water use restrictions, existing community zoning, the lack of sewer or septic systems and the inability to building new ones or expand old ones, would limit growth, she said. An analysis of the built-out model showed that the lack of water and wastewater systems would constrain development and leave the actual build-out short of the model's goals, she said.

A report on 2007 development activity in Morris County said that in 2006 and 2007 there were no applications for subdivisions in the 12 county towns in the Highlands preservation area. The county planning board, which issued the report, said that a major factor in that slowdown was the impact of the Highlands regulations.

Swan agreed that the Highlands rules could be a factor, but Tittel said that the slow economy was as much a factor, and that once the economy gets better, builders would begin to take advantage of the exceptions written into the Highlands Act and development would continue.

The county report said that "new site plan activity decreased substantially from the year before," and cited the housing market downturn as a key factor.

In 2006, 141 Highlands exceptions were issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection in the 12 towns in the preservation zone; in 2007, the state approved 45 exceptions, the report said.