July 15, 1998

How Is Our State Plan Doing?

by Bill Neil, Director of Conservation

Since Governor Whitman's January speeches raised expectations about a more effective State Plan, we thought interested citizens might like to see what we've been saying about it in different forums. Obviously, we're not happy with what we see now, and we have said so in detail in front of the State Planning Commission when we were invited to give testimony in February of this year. The problem was, even though we received a written invitation, we only got five minutes to critique the new 350-page plan. So we didn't even get a chance to read our modest 6 pages that we are putting up for you now on our Web site.

One of the great flaws in the State Plan is its lack of protective standards for Planning Areas 4-5, farmland and environmentally sensitive land, usually in the most rural parts of our state. The protections, or lack of them in 99% of the cases, have been left to municipal governments who do not have the will or courage to use the "police powers" delegated to them by the State Legislature to protect environmentally sensitive lands. They certainly do use those police powers (really the power to zone, to regulate land uses), however, to invite lots of development. From our point of view, the Washington Township Center application, heard in front of the State Planning Commission on April 22, 1998, is a dramatic, specific illustration of the failures of local government to fight sprawl and protect environmentally sensitive lands. NJ Audubon was the only conservation group to publicly testify against granting the new center for the Robbinsville area of Washington Township. We don't have specific complaints about what went on inside the boundaries of that center as a new model of mixed land use - commerce and housing. Rather, it was the failure to adequately protect the environs outside the Center that should have caused the State Planning Commission to turn down the application. In just this one township outside of Trenton, and outside of its Robbinsville center, Washington Township is calling for--inviting--28 million square feet of commercial office space and warehousing. That's almost the equivalent to three sets of World Trade Center towers - the second highest buildings in the world. Of course neighboring municipalities close to the Turnpike and the other state highways want the same thing. There is no regional plan that we can detect, and the State Plan has no tools to reign in the highway corridor sprawl that's coming. But the really revealing aspect of Washington Townships zoning is that after granting this extravagant level of office space growth, they still could not use their delegated police powers to put tough protective zoning on their remaining farmland. In our mind, that would have been the minimum any sense of fair compromise would have called for. But local governments cannot stand up to the power of their private landowners. Not here, not in East Amwell, not in Hopewell. That is why our Petition campaign calls for the State Planning Commission to set a protective state standard for these lands that municipalities won't protect. And that's what has led us to draft an outline of Legislation that would require municipalities and counties to formally tell their citizens what is being invited by their zoning. It's a land-use form of right to know. We'll keep you posted on future developments - and the failure to deal with them. But we'll close with one final thought.

You may or may not have seen the Star Ledger coverage of the traffic nightmare created by the HOV lanes on Route 287. It generated quite a citizen outcry, and now the heat is really on the DOT and federal Transportation Officials to throw the HOV lanes open to the rest of us commuters, sitting stalled in traffic. But what was missing in the Star Ledger's coverage was the linkage between the traffic nightmares along 287 and the land use decisions that led to so many auto dependent commuters jamming into the same work-site destination corridor. Let us assure the Star Ledger readers, and commuters, that the same fate is about to unfold, over the next 5-10 years, along Route 78 in Hunterdon and Warren County, and on a smaller scale, along Route 31. There, the same suburban zoning has been laid in place by the municipalities on the rural lands inland from the highway, and each municipality wants their own office park along the highway to balance the suburban zoning. There is virtually no public transportation or regional land use plan. And the pro-growth factions are holding conferences, clamoring for State infrastructure funding to make it all possible.

We wish we could tell you that New Jersey and the State Plan have learned from these past highway and land use mistakes. But we don't think they have, certainly not at the county or municipal level. And even though the State Plan pretends to know better, it has been so far willing to watch municipalities repeat the Route 1/206 corridor horrors all over again. Only a deafening citizen outcry can prevent that. The best way to get started is to sign our Petition. If you can't find it on the web site, give Bill Neil a call at 908-766-6446. Sensitive habitats, farmland, and your community sanity depend on making significant changes to the land use status quo. And by the way, just in case you may not have noticed, our distressed urban areas are, in most cases, still not even in the running for the "holy grail" of the rateable's chase: the blue-chip corporate office building/park. So don't pass up the chance to get involved.

Thanks.