New Jersey Audubon Magazine
FALL 2000 EDITION

Bill Neil, Director of Conservation

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted passage of H.R. 701, The Conservation & Reinvestment Act, (a.k.a. "CARA"), on May 11, 2000, by a 315-102 vote. This is truly landmark conservation legislation which New Jersey Audubon Society has been working on for many years – going back at least to 1989. At its heart in Title II is full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) at $900 million per year for 15 years, which was the level authorized way back in 1964 when Congress created the fund. Since then, Congress rarely ever lived up to its funding targets, with funding usually coming in at between $100-300 million annually. The revenues come largely from existing offshore oil and gas leases. For New Jersey, it could mean nearly $60 million dollars in annual funding, compared to the $1-4 million we would recently struggle to get on an annual basis.

Title III of the bill, The Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Fund, will send $350 million annually to state fish and wildlife departments for wildlife and conservation spending – including an estimated $7.7 million to New Jersey.

At a very practical level, this legislation will mean greatly increased, steady and predictable federal funding for habitat acquisition and non-game wildlife protection around the country. In some parts of the south and west, which will never enact any regulatory protection programs because of underlying political attitudes, this will be the only basis for further governmental conservation efforts.

We give our hearty thanks to New Jersey’s congressional delegation, which voted without exception for passage of this legislation and helped fight off many weakening amendments. Special thanks to Congressman Pallone (D, D-6) who worked with Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R, NY) to sponsor a key, late, clarifying amendment which addressed concerns that the bill might lead to increased offshore oil and gas drilling –the major worry among national conservation groups. Our thanks also to Rep. Jim Saxton (R, D-3 ) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (R, D-11 ) who have been steadfast in their support of this legislation. We know Rep. Saxton has a close working relationship with Rep. Don Young of Alaska, perhaps the key player in putting this BI-partisan legislation together and who seemed to relish his new role as "friend of the environment."

We now need to go to work on the Senate side, where the companion bill to H.R. 701, S. 2123, is starting out with about 19 co-sponsors. It recently picked up the endorsement of the Senate Environment Committee’s new chairman,
Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R, MS) has publicly given support to the mechanism behind the bill without committing yet to one of the competing Senate versions. We urge our members who read the early electronic version of this report to call New Jersey’s Senators, Frank Lautenberg (D) and Robert Torricelli (D) at 202-224-4744 and 202-224-3224, and urge their support for S. 2123. We need to get something close to H.R. 701 passed soon in the Senate, so that the joint Senate-House Committee can get to work in ironing out the differences, and clarifying some of the confusing provisions that were tacked on as House amendments. It is our view that the most difficult work will be done in this joint committee, but we first have to clear a "ballpark" bill for a vote on the Senate floor. We’re close and can’t afford to let this historic opportunity pass.

As we promised last issue, here is a table showing the ratings for our NJ congressional delegation (House) from the first session of the 106^th Congress (1999). There were sixteen House votes. 100% means the member voted correctly on all the issues as rated by the League of Conservation Voters.

* Robert Franks is the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat. He will be facing John Corzine from the Democratic Party for the seat vacated when Senator Frank Lautenberg retired.

STATE REPORT

Of Sewers and the State Plan

For seven years now, since her election in 1993, Governor Whitman, with the complete complicity of the Democratic Party, has been perfectly content with a very weak State Plan. Yes, lip service was paid to smart growth, countless and endless "stakeholder" processes were convened: water regulations, watershed this and watershed that, wastewater rules – and significant regulations came up for their five year review. Legally empty Administrative Orders were issued, agency reports were called for to tell the Governor how different departments were or were not "implementing" the plan. Of course, they had no idea of what the Governor wanted and neither did she. It was all non-regulatory, regulatory being the great political Rubicon that Whitman dared not cross. But through all these seven years of near political farce, a time bomb was ticking, ticking under the table in the stakeholder process convened to rewrite the wastewater regulations that govern where sewerage infrastructure (pipes, plants and septics) can go -and under what terms. Of course anyone familiar with planning and development projects knows that the rules for sewerage infrastructure are crucial to serious planning and therefore serious habitat protection. NJAS sat at the table for three years, until 1999, waiting for the Governor’s office, the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and the State Planning Commission to get together and face down the dilemmas and tough policy calls. How far could they go to integrate State Plan land use policies, such as they are into water regulations and laws most of which were written before the State Plan was adopted in 1992? We sent out an early warning memo to these three sides of the triangle in March of 1997… In July of the same year, we commissioned some legal work from Ken Johanson of New Providence to outline the possibilities for the Whitman Administration. Despite the document being widely and officially circulated during the stakeholder process, there was never a word uttered in response. From all the indicators we had, right through late 1999 until this spring, it looked as though there would be no significant implementation of the State Plan in the pending sewer rules.

New Jersey Audubon and the NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club and other environmental groups held press conferences to tell the public of our worries. And then things began to unravel publicly for the Whitman Administration. Patrick O’Keefe of the NJ Builders wrote a stinging, sarcastic op-ed piece which was widely printed, which accused the Whitman Administration of hypocrisy on the State Plan – since her own Treasury Department was planning to move hundreds of employees from downtown, urban Trenton to a suburban corn field in Hamilton Township. Then word spread that the Governor was about to receive the American Planning Association award - which we countered with a brief essay which asked out loud whether the Governor deserved a planning award. We commented:

…when author David Rusk was invited to Trenton just last week to address sprawl issues and urban revitalization, he was singing the praises of Oregon and the newly authorized Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, not the NJ State Plan. We agree, and think that, all things considered, it is the Atlanta Area in Georgia and the states of Oregon and Maryland that are pushing the planning envelope, not New Jersey. In the Garden State, our State Plan represents a treadmill leading nowhere, and even a step backwards from the historic regulatory achievement of our Pinelands protections, freshwater wetlands law, and even the Hackensack Meadowlands regional commission…so by all means, give the Governor an open space award, but don’t confuse 7 years of stalling and dissembling on genuine sprawl controls with the real thing. We don’t buy it and don’t think the rest of NJ’s citizens do either.

 

Indeed, this brief essay (call us at 908-766-5787 if you would like a copy, or visit the NJ Audubon Website at www.njaudubon.org and go to the conservation section) rocketed around the state via email and faxes and people we ran into weeks later, whom we never sent it to, were commenting on how "on target" it was. After all, NJ citizens had clearly signaled in a recent Eagleton- Star Ledger poll that they knew the score, that the State Plan was not controlling sprawl. And the subtext to the commentary was also that the Governor was not fighting hard on these issues, just as she refused to publicly campaign with us to close the coastal law loophole. Indeed, even as we write at the end of May, the press accounts are of another extensive Whitman business tour, this time to Asia, with much text devoted to who was picking up the tab for the business people tagging along.

We think the Governor’s staff was sensing which way the wind was blowing, especially in the press, and so on very short notice we all rushed down to the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University on April 27, 2000 to hear the Governor signal what her staff hoped would be perceived as a major change in direction, a Governor willing to control sprawl and implement the Plan where it is absolutely necessary as a first step – in the sewer regulations. We were supportive, but cautious, because we’ve heard to good intentions before. We were told flat out, by Pete McDonough, her press secretary, that there would be no briefing until the rules appeared in the New Jersey register in early June. In other words, no chance to critique – or offer advice – until they were out for formal comment in the New Jersey Register.

Indeed, the rule was not available for hand distribution until after the three-hour briefing given at NJDEP on June 6. Unfortunately, we can only share impressions based on this briefing, because the rules are difficult, and more than 200 pages long. It seems that the builders will have to jump through more processes, more loops in the environmentally sensitive planning areas of the State Plan, but we listened in vain for clear standards to predict the outcomes of the processes. Indeed, it was beginning to sound like the runaround one gets in the American Medical system in trying to straighten out bills. But we hope we’re wrong, and we promise a much closer look, and a further report in our next issue. Whatever they do or don’t deliver, the Whitman Administration treated this rule as if it were the President’s secret nuclear codebook from the height of the cold war. No collaborative process, no trust.

A major Republican contender, arguably the leading contender for Governor, Senate President Donald DiFrancesco (R, D-22) has not done well at his first two major at bats on sprawl control issues this winter and spring. First, he was the sponsor of a legislative resolution (S.R. 24) urging the completion of Route 55, a road even the New Jersey Department of Transportation isn’t eager to build (it’s not even in their pipeline of projects), and which everyone concedes will have a very tough time getting federal agency approvals. That’s because it will traverse some of the most sensitive wetlands and other environmentally sensitive land in the state, in Cumberland and Cape May Counties.

Then he rejected, en masse, a series of amendments written by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign to improve his bill S-16, which would renew the Transportation Trust Fund, a multi-billion dollar proposition. The amendments would have, among other things, made sure environmentally sensitive lands outlined by the State Plan were protected from harmful road projects (new roads and expansions) and that most of the money would be spend on existing road and bridge improvements ("fix it first"), with due justice for mass transportation and bike paths. These amendments were not a utopian reach by any means, yet the Senate President could not make even this stretch. It does not bode well for attempts to put teeth in the State Plan. Give him a call at 908-322-5500 or write to him at the State House, P.O. Box 099, Trenton, NJ 08625 if you agree with us that at this late date, New Jersey needs all the help it can get in controlling sprawl. It certainly doesn’t need roads that will intensify building pressures on Cape May County.

While Governor Whitman was putting her finger to the pulse of public opinion in April and May, we were busy at the drafting table with legislation that will really put teeth in the State Plan to protect our farm and forest rich regions, close the coastal building loophole, and see that state agencies and authorities conform their budgets and policies to protecting these areas. We were delighted to note, in May, as further confirmation of the shift in public opinion, that the Daily Record of Morristown called for regulatory standards to protect the Highlands, either through a Pinelands type regional commission or enforceable State Plan Standards. Our draft legislation plans to take this second route. We’re happy to see one of the state’s major papers make that job easier. Stay tuned.

NJAS was in attendance at New York’s famous Museum of Natural History in mid-April for a two-day symposium on the ecological impacts of sprawl, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, and the Metropolitan Conservation Alliance/Wildlife Conservation Society. We saw only one conservationist from New Jersey, no journalists, and it almost goes without saying, no NJ legislators – all for a conservation topic of pressing relevance to our region. We heard lot’s of interesting presentations on the dire effects of habitat fragmentation and the introduction of invasive species, but the one fact that stuck in our minds was the finding of pieces of isolated habitat in the New York metropolitan region that have only old box turtles. That’s right, a combination of physical isolation and increased predation on eggs means that you can still find the long-living box turtle in some of our habitat fragments, but they’ll be gone entirely in places in another 25 years.

We thought what was missing from the conference was the policy connection: given the implications of the science, what should policy makers do.? Echoing the skewed "discussion" inside New Jersey, Barbara Lawrence of New Jersey Future, our State Plan’s advocacy group, passed right over mention of the NJ Pineland’s Commission and its tools during her opening remarks on the causes of sprawl, and no one else in the conference brought it up until we did during a Q & A session. NJAS feels the Pinelands model is one of the best national ones to fight sprawl’s impacts, even if it was put in place (early 1980’s) before sprawl became a hot media word. Our thoughts were echoed by Richard L. Brodsky, the Chairman of the New York Assembly’s Committee on Environmental Conservation, who was one of the few elected officials who attended. He told the gathering that he had listened for two days to speaker after speaker, scientist after scientist, yet still had no idea what they wanted from him in the way of legislation.

His tone conveyed just the right mixture of distress and bafflement at how the discourse could unfold and be completely detached from the world of political implementation.

We don’t believe it was all naivete on the part of the scientists, however. Some of the presenters were seasoned participants in the East Coast’s environmental-policy battles. But we have a hunch that the disconnect is based at least partly on a deep pessimism about where the two parties are, both in New York and New Jersey, on the sprawl issue. One could almost say environmentalists and planners are trained to pull up short about the implications of their ideas. They know better than to push into the public policy arena… and in one sense, the overwhelmingly absence of elected officials from the conference confirms in advance what the politicians think of its themes. How to break this fruitless cycle is one of the great challenges for citizens, and for the fate of nature in the next century.

As our readers may know, NJAS has been opposing a general wetland permit for NJ’s cranberry industry since it emerged as an issue in 1995. We have argued that Individual Permits, under the tight standards of our tough Freshwater Wetlands Act, are more appropriate for the scope and nature of the industry’s activities, which create a monoculture of five acres where once their was greater wetland diversity. And all along, we have registered a skepticism about why the industry was pressing so hard for expansion. In the fall of 1999, NJAS and numerous other environmental groups filed a lawsuit in New Jersey’s Appellate Court to overturn the permit.

Since at least the fall of 1998, there has been increasing press coverage of the growing surplus of cranberries, nationwide. With record crops and record acreage under cultivation (and record pressure on government permitters for easier rules and more acres?) it is little wonder there is now such a glut that prices-per-barrel inside the Ocean Spray cooperative have plunged from a high of $60-70 dollars a barrel to under $20 – under most production costs, that is. It seems there was just one major miscalculation along the route to the great expansion. Whereas growers argued in the New York Times in 1998 that the only thing holding them back from roaring international markets was supply – it now appears that with plenty of supply they simply couldn’t create the demand. And now, to cap the insult to conservationists who never bought into the industry’s expansion mania, the industry is seeking a Marketing Order from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to legally restrict the supply on the market by 15%, through a program that was set up way back in the 1930’s under the New Deal. Do you think consumers are going to benefit from the laws of supply and demand, and see much difference in the supermarket price? Don’t count on it. This business looks to us to be a very politicized market. Don’t be surprised to wake up this fall and find out that all the school kids are drinking cranberry juice throughout the federal school lunch programs. So where are all the free marketeers crying foul when you need them? Haven’t heard a word of protest from the University of Chicago Business School, or closer to home, from the Princeton or Rutgers economics departments.