Friday, April 27, 2007
By JAN BARRY
STAFF WRITER
Saving water-generating land in the Highlands is a state priority. But you still can't tell exactly what properties state planners have in mind.
Three years after landmark legislation to make it happen, the New Jersey Highlands Council still hasn't compiled a list of specific properties that must be saved.
And that has grass-roots activists asking why the council hasn't made use of existing open-space lists of dozens of tracts compiled years ago by counties and municipalities. The council's answer: in due time.
Lawmakers billed the 2004 Highlands Act as urgently needed action to stop overdevelopment of terrain in seven counties that generates water for millions of state residents. Despite that core intent, the draft regional master plan of the Highlands Council, which is charged with overseeing the project, hasn't yet gotten to the point of including a priority open-space list.
Instead, the council's efforts have been devoted to a conflicting mission set out by the Highlands Act: funneling further development into areas able to absorb it with minimal environmental damage. The draft master plan, now undergoing public review, dwells on that aspect, with maps of where development might go.
And even that work may need another review: Many areas proposed for development are located in flood plains that were under water in last week's deluge.
The regional plan proposes water-protection, farm-conservation and development zones across a region stretching from Bergen County to Hunterdon County. Wading through technical reports and scores of critical public comments, the Highlands Council is struggling to complete the plan, nearly a year behind the Legislature's June 2006 deadline.
In the absence of a regional priority buyout list, towns, counties and the state Green Acres program have worked on their own open-space lists to purchase properties that could form a core for a regional preservation plan. The lack of regional coordination upsets many supporters of the Highlands preservation law.
Bill O'Hearn, a Ringwood borough councilman and a leader of the activist Highlands Coalition, maintains that a regional list should be a top priority of the panel charged with drafting a regional plan.
"One of the ways of judging the success of the Highlands Council is the fate of these special resources areas," O'Hearn said. "I would have liked to have seen a detailed list in the master plan."
Jeff Tittel, executive director of the state Sierra Club, says that "June will be the third year since it passed. Meanwhile, 10,000 acres have been lost to development -- and streams get more polluted. Oakland floods and they [developers] want more building in Oakland. Yet the Highlands Council hasn't even put together a list of priority acquisitions."
Highlands Council Chairman John Weingart said this issue is being worked on. "We are certainly going to build from the existing [open-space] lists and then put together one that is specific to the mandates of the Highlands Act," he said.
The Highlands Council staff created a conservation priority map that's included in the draft plan. That map, it said, generally highlights features such as forests, wetlands and streams that provide the basis for drawing up a list of specific properties. For instance, the map identifies areas such as the Wyanokie Highlands next to the Wanaque Reservoir, where buying privately owned forest tracts is promoted by the Highlands Coalition, noted Tom Borden, the Highlands Council's chief counsel.
"One of the priority issues for the Highlands Council is to compare local priorities with ours," Borden said. "Over time, this will fine-tune the open-space efforts. Over time, there will be a list that is specific as to parcels."
However, neither Weingart nor Borden could provide a timetable for that part of the process.
Recent flooding in the region, argues Ella Filippone of the nonprofit Passaic River Coalition, provided fresh proof that a priority list will find no shortage of properties that fit the bill as environmentally critical.
"In the upper reaches of the Highlands, a lot of houses are being proposed. There has to be a good review of what is being done upstream that is increasing flooding," she said, recommending that a priority buyout list also include residential lots in flood plains that should be converted to wetlands.
"The Highlands Council should bring in for discussion the nonprofit groups that are buying land in the Highlands" to coordinate both a priority list and a strategy of buyouts, said Filippone, whose organization brokers open-space purchases between private and government entities.
"There is a need for the state to acquire the larger tracts. Then there are the smaller tracts -- 20 to 30 acres -- that land trusts should be acquiring. The [regional] priority list should be coordinated with Green Acres, the counties, the municipalities and the private land trusts."
HIGHLANDS DEVELOPMENT
The Highlands regional master plan to preserve water-generating lands proposes protection and development zones across a region stretching from Bergen County to Hunterdon County. The plan proposes setting growth limits on towns in the region based on water availability. It also would require:
• Water management plans to ensure sufficient water.
• Water conservation and recycling actions.
• Monitoring programs to track water use.
• Coordination with the state Department of Environmental Protection on water allocation permits.
• No new land uses that would be "detrimental to the water quality" of area streams and wells.
E-mail: barry@northjersey.com
Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.