New Jersey Audubon Magazine
FALL 1999 EDITION
Bill Neil, Director of Conservation

June 7, 1999 -- Conservation Report -- FALL ISSUE, NJAS MAGAZINE

William R. Neil, Director of Conservation

They’re back, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, despite their unpopularity with environmentalists and citizens: they’re the riders, amendments to unrelated bills that might have a hard time standing alone on their own policy merits. They are usually anti-environment, pushed on behalf of special interests, often for very specific locations. There is a strong congressional temptation, currently, from the right side of the Republican party, to place them on the most pressing emergency bill or big "inevitable bill" (like final budget bills) that no one can risk losing. This Spring of 1999, the Kosovo Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill, to address foreign and domestic disasters, saw the riders jump on once again. Five major ones surfaced, and three stayed intact when the President signed the bill on May 21, 1999. Conservation forces were successful in knocking out a generic ESA (Endangered Species Act) rider which would have suspended the designation of critical habitat on federal lands and another which would have blocked the listing of the Alabama Sturgeon -- a terrible, terrible precedent if each congressional delegation starts blocking the listing of species in their own states. Two mining riders, one site specific and the other generic, and an oil royalty payment increase, stayed intact.

The going is slow for H.R. 960, the best hope in Congress to protect threatened and endangered species and to revise the existing act. As of May, 1999, we only have 80 co-sponsors, no Republicans in New Jersey, and some New Jersey Democrats who supported the Miller bill ( Rep. George Miller, D-CA) last year, are not signed on this year (Reps. Steven Rothman (D, D-9) and Robert Menendez (D, D-13). On the Senate side, Senator Frank Lautenberg has agreed to introduce ESRA there – if he can find 20 co-sponsors. We think Senator Robert Torricelli (D, NJ) should be the first one. For our readers who would like to stay on top of this legislation and related matters, we recommend the website of the Endangered Species Coalition at www.stopextinction.org.

NJAS continues to monitor and support complex congressional efforts to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million dollars per year. We are working closely with the National Wildlife Federation on this issue and we agree on the following principles:

1. Assure a permanent source of significant conservation funding
2. Fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) at $900 million annually
3. Assure that the states receive 50 percent of the LWCF funds
4. Use the existing Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leases as the source of the revenue
5. Make sure that nongame wildlife gets its fair share – long overdue
6. Provide coastal states with the resources they need for environmental restoration and conservation

This is the best opportunity we’ve ever had to get this longstanding need fully funded. The bitter aftertaste of a failed impeachment, feeding the desire for constructive bi-partisan accomplishments, as well as the bountiful economy and record budget surpluses give us a set of circumstances that will probably never be repeated. You can help by contacting your Representative in Congress at 202-224-3121 and repeating the simple message: make the LWCF permanent and fund it at the rate of at least $900 million dollars per year.

You can stay on top of the Congressional picture by visiting the National Wildlife Federation’s website at: www.nwf.org

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) wrote to us early in May, 1999, to outline his requests for federal land acquisition funding for New Jersey, with the sizeable figures representing the heightened expectations of a fully funded LWCF: $8 million for Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge; $8 million for Wallkill NWR, $9 million for the Pinelands National Reserve and $54 million for the Forest Legacy Program, including $20 million earmarked for the Highlands Region in New Jersey. Once again we thank Senator Lautenberg for working so hard on these issues for New Jersey, and keeping us posted on his efforts.

June 7, 1999 -- Conservation Report -- FALL ISSUE, NJAS MAGAZINE

William R. Neil, Director of Conservation

We are very tempted to add the word "follies" after the term State Plan, but for now, we’ll leave you with a sample of what we said in a speech at the War Memorial Building in Trenton, on March 31, 1999, upon the adoption of the "Interim" version of the current State Plan, undergoing its five year review after its approval by the Legislature in 1992:

In the same vein, we thought it was time to search for some answers as to why the state of Oregon, which has the nation’s toughest and most effective anti-sprawl legislation, was able to do it and New Jersey is stuck with an "Ineffective, Terminally Indecisive, Interim Plan." So we worked up a little essay-book review of Brent Walth’s political biography of two-term Oregon Governor (1967-1975) Tom McCall, Fire at Eden’s Gate, Tom McCall and the Oregon Story, reading with particular interest to answer the question: did Oregon have a unique political culture, or if they didn’t, what made the difference between their success and our failure? We also undertake a brief self-examination of the environmental "community" in New Jersey, and its interaction with the political parties. Here’s a small sample:

…A less flattering analysis might raise the question of whether there’s a greater tendency now for environmental groups to ask their policy allies in each political party what they’re comfortable with… not what needs to be done… in turn, the political parties say, before they embark upon anything as risky as state-wide land-use reform: "show me the winning coalition you’ve built for us. After you… no, after you," as the expression goes… Whatever the ultimate internal cause, we conservationists in New Jersey ought to admit that our failure to achieve an effective State Plan is one of our greatest historical setbacks in a state that has done some very remarkable environmental things. Future citizens and the natural world will pay a very high price for our failure.

On May 12, 1999, at a meeting in front of the State Plan’s Plan Development Committee, the Highlands Coalition presented its request to create a set of policies to give some meaning to the designation of the Highlands as an "Area of Critical State Concern." Despite the fact that they were sent copies of the proposals way back in mid-March, 1999, there was no Governor Whitman, DEP Commissioner Robert Shinn, or Dept. of Community Affairs Commissioner Jane Kenny, or any other administration official present to support this restrained proposal for more process. And of course, the mere hint of something stronger, of a closer focus on the Highlands, even if it really doesn’t promise anything more than a new "stakeholder" process, is enough to set the counties howling in fear and opposition. They see Pinelands around every procedural bend in the road, and are missing another golden opportunity to string things out through more stakeholder meetings, or, as seemed to be their preference, through the State Plan Cross Acceptance process.

The 9-mile long, $25 million dollar Trenton-to-Hopewell sewer line was officially laid to rest on March 24, 1999 when the Hopewell Township Committee voted to terminate its September 8, 1998 sewer service agreement with Merrill Lynch and the City of Trenton.

However, it took until June 7, 1999 for NJAS and the other litigants in the court case against the Township, the NJDEP and the NJ Environmental Infrastructure Trust to determine that our issues had become moot.

So the worst of the proposals is off the table, but the task of revising the Township’s Master Plan, and therefore determining how much growth and where citizens want it, is still to be done. So the atmosphere in the Township is tense and contested, with a lot at stake. We have been urging that everyone back off of sweeping new sewage treatment proposals until the Township properly studies its septic horror stories and finishes the planning reviews.

Despite the very uncertain future, looking back to September of 1998, its looks like we, the NJ Chapter of Sierra Club, The Delaware Riverkeeper and the Coalition to Save Hopewell Valley, climbed the political equivalent of Mt. Everest. A lot of conventional wisdom went out the window with the lawsuit and the election of two Democrats in traditionally Republican Hopewell.

Having said the above about the situation in Hopewell, it was not hard to decide who should receive the 1999 Conservation award, presented at NJAS’ fall weekend in Cape May: The Coalition to Save Hopewell Valley. We’ve seen a lot of long-shot conservation battles during NJAS’ century-plus history, but none have been fought against greater odds than the one to defeat the Hopewell-to-Trenton sewer line. The line was backed by the The Times (of Trenton), the County Executive, Robert Prunetti, the Mayor of Trenton, Doug Palmer, Governor Whitman and DEP Commissioner Robert Shinn, largely, but not exclusively, on behalf of one of world’s largest corporations, Merrill Lynch, not to mention the Hopewell Township Committee. Where was the cause for hope and any reasonable expectation to prevail… except among the deeply held sense of so many members of the Coalition to Save Hopewell Valley that they were being forced to "eat" levels of growth that they didn’t want… through processes that they barely understood? Our congratulations to Lesley Kramer, Peggy Snyder, MaryLou Ferrara, Karn Dooley, the "Harbourton Ridge girls" - and so many other citizens who stood up and fought to control the level of growth in their Township… They took the Trenton-to-Hopewell sewer line onto the pages of the New York Times and the screens of CNN, and made "Hopewell" synonymous with suburban sprawl and a failed State Plan.

With the effort to save a million acres of new land in New Jersey underway, and with hundreds of thousands of acres already under public ownership, sooner or later didn’t you just know that someone would want to find homes in our state parks and forests for "off-highway motorcycles?" Thanks to the efforts of Assemblymen Scott Garrett and Guy Gregg (Republicans, Dist. 24) we had to race down to Trenton in early May to tell Assembly Agriculture Committee Chairman John Gibson (R, D-1) what a bad idea their bill was. Actually, in the abstract, as a matter of competing user rights, the motorcycle advocates have a point: they should have some of the land for their use too. The problem is their interest is dramatically at odds with nearly all the other park and forest users, human and animal. They didn’t make a very persuasive case, not being clear as to whether they wanted just a few limited areas for tracks or access to many cross country trails and broad natural areas. NJDEP Commissioner Jim Hall says he is willing to look at any list of proposed sites the noisy users have in mind – and they’ll have to get the backing of the local government for their choice too. The bill, A-3019, did not make it out of the Committee and we managed to persuade one of the co-sponsors, Assemblyman Herb Conway (D, D-7) to publicly pull out from support. NJAS, with our nature centers and growing inventory of donor lands, has had too much unhappy first hand experience with off road cycles to be too "reasonable" about this proposal.

NJAS along with the NJ Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, Monmouth County Friends of Clearwater, the NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club, the NJ Environmental Federation, the NJ PIRG Citizen Lobby and the Association of NJ Environmental Commissions formally left (walked out of) the "Surface Water Quality Standards Stakeholders Process," part of the grand Whitman water regulation revision processes that have caused so much controversy since 1996. We left via a letter to Commissioner Robert Shinn, sent on April, 1, 1999 (no joking, though), which informed him that "after 3 years, we can point to no concrete accomplishment and little progress. Our policy and regulatory proposals have been consistently ignored. Instead, the Stakeholder process has become a biased forum for the polluters to conduct a systematic technical attack on water quality protections." If you would like a copy of this letter, or Bill Wolfe’s (Policy Director, NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club) 8 page, fuller explanation to the environmental community about why we couldn’t stay, just give us a call at 908-766-6446. By the way, we’re still attending the watershed portion of the water stakeholder processes, still waiting, as of June 1, 1999, to see what State Planning cards are played into the sewerage regulation hand.

NJAS has been busy in April, May and June in testifying before various legislative committees in Trenton on the bill that will carry out the will of the voters from last November, to buy 1,000,000 acres of farms, forests and recreational lands, and which sets up the Garden State Preservation Trust.

We support the bills, with the following reservations:

1. The five public members need to be people with backgrounds in the purposes of the bill: open space, farmland, historic preservation.
2. The trust should not have the power to block nominations for protections, a redundant power, since the legislature already has it; it means more delay.
3. We believe that the language which addresses the purchases of Pinelands Development Credits (PDC’s) does not belong in the bill, neither having been agreed to by the legislature, nor the citizens, last fall.
4. The date of November 3, 1999 to require appraisers to use the zoning in effect then as the zoning basis for their appraisals is wrong, is arbitrary, and is being done out of fear of possible down zoning. Down zoning doesn’t happen often, and will be slapped down by courts if done carelessly.
5. NJAS supports an urban allocation of $10 million per year, $100 million cumulatively over 10 years, for acquisition and development of urban parks and recreational facilities, something which we heard the Assembly bill sponsor agree to and Governor Whitman campaign on last fall.
6. We think the time is ripe to revisit the Ogden-Rooney reforms of 1993, which set minimum standards for the "conveyances" of public lands (swapping, selling, leasing). The press has been filled with accounts of unhappy development proposals for "surplus" state lands. We need inventories, an airing of the terms of existing leases, and public hearings. This legislation should initiate the process but not be delayed with working out the solutions and details for these needed reforms.

As we head into further committee hearings in June, the ability of non-profits to save agricultural land with funds from this legislation has been restored, and at NJAS’ suggestion, language has been added to prevent any of the funds approved by voters from being used for "shore protection or beach replenishment" projects.