NJAS Opinion: Spring, 1992
Humor me awhile and let's indulge ourselves by taking a flight
into the future to learn what might be the environmental landscape
of New Jersey in spring 2020. Promise to leave aside the "yes,
buts," those bastions of negativity and enemies of progress.
Just concentrate on the vision.
Most exciting to behold is the panorama of green still spreading
over the Highlands, the Pinelands and the Delaware Bayshore area.
In fact, the people in the streets are having a hard time understanding
why there was ever any debate about these precious areas - the
whole struggle they heard about back in the nineties they regard
as a quaint relic of a former age, an age of division they don't
identify with. How is it these areas are still green? Well, the
nineties were a busy critical time in the history of New Jersey.
That was when the tremendous changes began to occur, changes in
zoning, changes in planning, changes in legal definitions, in
state and federal policies, and in local ordinances.
The courts were exciting places in those times, right through
the first decade of the new millennium. Starting with the Gardner
decision in '91, the courts decided a number of cases that began
to dissolve the conflicts between conservation and home rule.
That decision, that agricultural zoning in the Pinelands was constitutional,
and was neither a taking nor a denial of equal protection under
the law, paved the way for landmark decisions affirming the rights
of towns and regional commissions to designate forest land for
conservation in the public interest. Other decisions followed
in the next decade affirming the rights of regional commissions
to protect water supplies and upholding the validity of existing
use zoning for conservation purposes. In the celebrated Taurus
decision, the courts validated the inactivity of the landowner
as a trigger for conservation zoning and found it was not a taking.
Other decisions redefined the previous narrow conception of highest
and best use of land as most profitable use to "reasonable
and appropriate" use. Finally in the Pisces decision, the
court ruled that the loss of a "hope to develop" was
not a taking because there was no denial of reasonable and appropriate
use.
But it wasn't only the courts that kept New Jersey green. Just
look at all the areas with regional commissions. Determined efforts
by conservationists, planners, concerned citizens and legislators,
and several government initiatives brought about the Highlands
Commission on the Pinelands model, after the same initial period
of uneasy coexistence the Pinelands had with the municipalities.
With the experience of the Pinelands and Hackensack Meadowlands
Commissions serving as guides on what to do and what not to do,
several other regional commissions also sprang up when it was
found that the idea really worked. The old-fashioned conference
of mayors in the Great Swamp Watershed became the Watershed Conservation
Commission; likewise the Delaware Bay Commission and the Raritan
Bay Commissions came to be because citizens wanted their resources
conserved.
All the green and open space you see in 2020 was the result of
some other determined initiatives as well. The State Plan of the
nineties provided a vision for how green we could be if we wanted
to be and had a role in halting the unwise placement of roads
that extended the sprawl of the last century. When land-filling
was halted by confiscatory rates and recycling alternatives, all
those mounds of dirt the oldtimers remember were converted to
wildlife habitat in an unprecedented wave of cooperation among
regulators, consultants, government officials, ecologists, conservationists,
engineers, and nurseries. The Highlands even got a National Forest
because everybody in those days was extremely unhappy with the
tremendous discrepancy in funding between the eastern and western
states from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. When the New
York, New Jersey, and Connecticut delegations got together and
insisted on an equal piece, the citizens got what they wanted.
And the Green Acres Bond issues passed every third year on the
ballot from the nineties into the teens.
When society adjusted to staying out of wetlands for needed development,
the stabilization of wildlife populations began to occur. That
process was greatly aided by the conversion of corporate lawns
to wildlife habitat and by the tremendous interest that developed
in the late nineties and early years of the millennium in landscape
gardening with native plants. In fact, the legislature in 2007
voted down a subversive attempt to rename the Garden State. The
green we see around all these buildings in 2020 wouldn't have
happened without all those put-back ordinances the town and commissions
passed for tree planting following construction. In fact, owing
to the acceptance of regional zoning in certain parts of the state,
there was actually an increase in contiguous forest between 2005
and 2017, the year of the second state plan (there were so many
inventions in the previous decade that a technological plan had
to be created).
Hopefully we all like what we see in 2020. The Arthur Kill is
now the first national urban estuary. Hudson Canyon was declared
a marine sanctuary in 2008 as a result of petitions gathered from
whale watchers, who became the fastest growing recreational group
around the turn of the millennium and bolstered the lagging shore
tourism industry. That industry had slumped owing to gas prices
and water quality problems from earlier over-development of the
coastal zone. But now the recreational fleet had doubled owing
to the recreation market and the synthesis of Z fuel from industrial
by-products. Protection of the wetlands in the eighties and nineties
was a great boon to the fish consumers in the public, who have
grown by leaps and bounds since 2000. All the tree planting, reforestation,
the adoption of light rail between cities and the marketing of
fuel from landfill gases helped the air quality readings in the
urban zones. All those green stream corridors were a direct result
of regional zoning. That is probably why two or three watershed
areas in the state are clamoring to be included in regional commission
zones. Anyway, you get the gist....
Richard Kane
Director of Conservation
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