July 16, 1999

By Bill Neil, Director of Conservation

Published in the New Jersey Register as "a proposed amendment," June 7, 1999

BRACE YOURSELF:

HERE COMES THE DEVELOPMENT ONSLAUGHT:

50,000 More Dwelling Units Possible For Cape May by 2020

These are NJ Audubon's Society's preliminary thoughts on the Cape May County Department of Health's proposed "amendments" to the Cape May County Water Quality Management Plan, a.k.a. as the "208" plan.

The first thing citizens should know is that NJ Audubon as well as other environmental groups asked the Department of Environmental Protection, specifically Judy Jengo and Commissioner Robert Shinn, in December of 1998 and the early winter of 1999, to prevent this major amendment from going forward and instead to hold it up until the new, and hopefully more stringent regulations governing wastewater planning are completed. We've been waiting for those regulations since the summer of 1997. The core of this Plan addresses septics and sewage treatment expansions and line extensions for Cape May County until build-out - defined as everything buildable by current zoning to the year 2020 - in other words, the bottom of the ninth inning environmentally for arguably the most environmentally sensitive county in New Jersey . The terrible paucity of information contained in this Wastewater Plan - nearly the bare legal minimum - is simply inadequate to address the problems of water supply which are intimately connected to the level of development and its primary and secondary impacts on the habitat (aquatic and terrestrial) of Cape May, and may be inadequate for the long term protection of the stream flows in the county. We believe the legal authority can be found in several places in New Jersey law and regulations at DEP to require a better, more thorough analysis than is contained in this report. We think that a better analysis would have to give the public clear options to vote on, to give them real choices that candidly discussed the impact of the level of development that is clearly on the municipal zoning maps.

The fact that Cape May County, specifically Cape May City, was the first in New Jersey to have to resort a desalinization treatment plant on September 1, 1998 is a dramatic indication that something is very wrong in Cape May County, and at the DEP. Stop and think of what default to a desalinization plant means: we have laws and regulations, state and federal, that set up a continuing planning process for water supply and wastewater management on a 20 year horizon; having to go to desalinization in 1998 means that that planning did not work... now, in a simply unacceptable, unbelievable proposition, the DEP is stating, in the NJ Register, that "the Department and Cape May County will be addressing the water supply concerns for the region separate from the WQM Plan/WMP. The results of that effort might have implications on future water allocation proposals and WQM Plan amendments." You bet they will. That is exactly why this WMP amendment should be held up.

For years now we and the public have been subject to a constant stream of exhortations and babble - yes, babble, about sustainable this, and sustainable that - don't you know that Governor Whitman and Commissioner Shinn are two of the chief exponents of the "sustainable state" idea - and vigorous defenders of home rule. They are very content with a toothless and nearly standardless State Plan, one that should be requiring county and local governments with extraordinary environmental resources, like Cape May's, to enact adequate zoning standards for Planning Areas 4-5, which would cover a good chunk of Cape May. Tough (lower densities) zoning would not just prevent the fragmentation of habitat, but also protect the threatened ground and surface water resources of the county by dramatically limiting development on what is left of the Cape May uplands. In answer to the cries from the pro-development forces in Cape May that more than half the county is wetlands, and they can't build on them, we say rightly so, but what about your Atlantic side barrier islands, from Ocean City to Wildwood Crest, how much of that resource has been saved? And the tremendous development in the lower part of the peninsula, below the canal? Now, in our opinion, the failure to do the land use right, to be protective enough, led to the water crisis, with the fact of desalination to demonstrate the lack of good planning and sustainability. After 5 years of the voluntary State Plan, and despite the proposed CAFRA reforms, neither of which are even mentioned in this Plan, and despite plenty of warning signals and good data on salt water intrusion, it is the taxpayers of the State, and the United State Department of Agriculture who have to come to the rescue of the local and county governments who could not get the land use and water supply in balance. So after years of groaning about bureaucrats in Trenton and Washington, always meddling in local affairs, the home rule team ends up asking the distant, faceless forces for loans and grants. So much for the sustainable State and home rule in land use. (The breakdown on the 5 million cost of the desalinization plant is: Governor's Discretionary Fund: $250,000; Wastewater Trust and NJ DEP, $1.35 million; USDA, $1 million grant and $2.5 million loan). We say to those who are so fond of "capacity based analysis" and "constraints analysis," - what happened here? When you fail to apply it and you have a crisis, then you get bailed out financially? What conditions did the State and federal government put on their generosity? To require tougher development standards? To reduce the projected level of growth? We seriously doubt it.

In Chapter 5 of this Plan, its most candid one, it is admitted that "Saltwater intrusion has become a major concern for the County. .. An additional side effect of well over-pumping is that the consistent lowering of the groundwater table in the upper aquifers has the potential to alter the base flow characteristics of surface streams and consequently adversely impacting ecological conditions of the aquatic environment." (page 75). The report documents the importance of the Cohansey Sand Aquifer and the Kirkwood Formations and indicates they are both in trouble in Cape May because of "excessive use,"... " excessive withdrawals" (page 78). We presume that a substantial proportion of that "excessiveness" is because of the level of existing development, although agricultural withdrawals may have contributed somewhat in parts of the County - of course the proportions are nowhere stated in this report. According to the 1995 NJ Statewide Water Supply Plan, it is stated in this Plan, "that the Cape May coastal watershed (Planning Area 23), which includes all of Cape May County, is expected to be in a water supply deficit by the year 2010." Chapter Five goes on to paint a picture of ongoing crisis in water supply:

Saltwater intrusion is a major problem in the southern Cape May area in the unconfined and upper confined aquifers. The Cohansey aquifer in particular is considered by the NNJDEP to be a threatened regional water resource based on present and anticipated withdrawals as well as the rate of documented saltwater intrusion...Implementation of an alternative water supply plan for southern Cape May County at this time is necessary in order for the Cohansey aquifer to remain a viable water supply...The expansion of sewer service areas within Cape May County has the potential to accelerate the decline in ground water levels and the rate of saltwater intrusion within the region. Future WQMP efforts will need to more closely link water supply and wastewater management issues. Since this region is on the verge of a water supply deficit, the water managers within the region, in coordination with local officials, should be utilizing the ground water recharge maps discussed in the following section and included as part of this WQMP. These maps should be used as a means of keeping impervious surfaces to a minimum so as to aid the area's ability to obtain as much recharge as possible regardless of wastewater service area designations (pps. 79-80, our emphasis).

Now who could argue with this? It is almost self-evident; but this report, whatever its minimum legal requirements under a narrow reading of DEP regulations, seems content to defer these issues to the unsatisfactory future, minimize the inadequate local zoning, and, remarkably, tell us nothing about the level of impervious surface cover over these crucial aquifer recharge areas. We called to get more information; we asked what the current % of impervious cover is, and what it would be under build-out under current zoning; the answer was that they didn't know. It is our understanding that these aquifer recharge zones, no more than 10% of the land area of the county, are in the growth zones designated in Planning Areas 3 along Route 9 in Lower and Middle Townships. And that is a crucial linkage to the proposed new CAFRA regulations, the better, earlier version of which explicitly wanted to dramatically reduce the % of impervious surface cover on development parcels in Planning Areas 4-5, to be the equivalent of 1 Dwelling Unit per 15 acres in PA-5 and about 1 DU in PA-5 - a vast improvement over the local zoning outlined in this Plan, which nowhere approaches that level of protection, except in a very small portion of Dennis Township, where the zoning is 1 unit per 10 acres - we thank them for sticking their necks out much further than their neighboring townships. If these recharge areas are indeed Planning Area 3, that needs to corrected to make them Planning Area 5. But, of course, the CAFRA reforms are stalled under fierce county and legislative lobbying, and the Governor has shown no stomach for a legislative crusade to close that terrible 25 and under CAFRA loophole. Without closing the loophole, builders could construct 24 and under residential units without any of the impervious cover limits applying. That's why the CAFRA reform is hollow without the Legislative loophole action.

We would be neglecting our duties at this point if we didn't answer Senator William Gormley's comments in The Press of Atlantic City on Friday, July 16, 1999 (Matthew Dowling's article: "Gormley calls CAFRA changes incomprehensible, "a Failure."). The Senator is once again posing as the champion of local and county governments, who know best and are pressed for money to do the proper planning. Well Senator, we invite you to look at and comment on the desalination plant for Cape May and what it means, and this Wastewater Management Plan, with its projected 50,000 residential units, and then tell this audience that local governments are doing just fine and the problem is in Trenton. Given your positions on coastal growth management Senator, you have fully earned the nickname "Senator Sprawl."

This Water Quality Management Plan is very disappointing also in the new septic management program that it puts forward, based on a septic model which ends up declaring that a mere .8 of an acre lot is sufficient to protect the ground water of Cape May. We will have more to say about this model after we talk with our technical consultants. Suffice it to say now that its chemical standard for nitrate, based on a state standard, is five time weaker than that set for the Pinelands, and yet a good part of the County has comparable soils. Whatever the scientific merits or demerits of the model put forth in this Plan, the final product is a zoning lot size that is pure suburbia, and pure habitat fragmentation for the remaining natural resources of the county, whether they be good farm soils, upland forests or intermittent wetlands or vernal pools. For us, the fate of the natural resources of Cape May, indigenous as well as migratory, is jeopardized by this terrible zoning, and the zoning density is inextricably linked to water quality and supply issues, as well as the commuting quality of life of the people who already live in Cape May, and those who just come to visit.

We think the citizens of Cape May should be disappointed in their local and county elected officials, who set the tone for the planners, and their legislative leaders who are content with the building status quo at the coast. And they should be disappointed and angry at Governor Whitman and Commissioner Shinn, who push the rhetoric about sustainability, while standing by seemingly untroubled by the prospect of 50,000 more housing units in Cape May County. We urge citizens to turn out by the thousands, to oppose this report, a report that evades more issues than it illuminates. It leaves out the pending CAFRA reforms, any discussion of the lengths or costs of the sewer plant and line extensions, who will pay for them, and is virtually silent on the impact to the natural resources of the county - with the exception of potential water impacts. This despite the recent fine work done by the non-game program under Larry Niles at DEP, which has mapped the areas of greatest biodiversity in their Landscape Project, for Cape May and the rest of the state. This Plan contradicts all the current rhetoric about watershed planning and the integration of the State Plan into the draft wastewater management regulations. The local zoning standards would even fail to pass muster in front of the vague standards of our weak state plan. We urge you the citizens to create a great uproar in this the bottom of the ninth inning for the fate of Cape May; call the Governor at 609-292-6000 and tell her the Cape May Water Quality Management Plan amendments are unacceptable and should be withdrawn; call Commissioner Shinn and tell him you oppose them and that the Department should step in insist on something much better: 609-292-2885.