September 28, 1998
The State Plan and the Proposed 9-Mile Trenton-Hopewell Township Sewer Line: Standing the State Plan on Its Head
We have been keeping our readers posted on this important State Plan issue, which is also a taxpayer issue because of the $25 million dollar Trust loan the public is going pick up the tab for to pay for the pipeline. Our appeal of the DEP's Level 2 decision, which they announced on Aug. 3 or 18th, depending on how you read their work, has been denied. We made the appeal to DEP Commissioner Robert Shinn. The Trust, which distributes public money for sewer lines, plant expansions and upgrades, voted on Friday, September 25, 1998, to begin funding the project. Governor Whitman's office has said they will not veto the minutes of the meeting, which was another way to stop or slow down the project. New Jersey Audubon Society, the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Coalition to Save Hopewell Valley, New Jersey Tax Payers Task Force, and the Delaware RiverKeeper
will be joining forces in taking this case to Appeals Court and trying to win a "stay" to block the funding of the sewer line. Our law firm is Potter and Dickson of Princeton. In August, we asked the NJ Conservation Foundation and New Jersey Future to join us in August, but so far we have no answer; ANJEC joined our appeal of Level 2 to Commissioner Shinn and we awaiting their decision on whether they will join the court case. If you would like to make a contribution to the legal fund, send a check made out to "The Coalition to Save Hopewell Valley," (put "for legal defense fund" on your check note space) c/o Peggy Snyder at 4 Dublin Road, Pennington, NJ 08534. Peggy's number is 609-730-9481.
To whet your appetite for this cause and case, we quote from a memo our attorneys have obtained, dated April 23, 1998, from NJDEP Commissioner Robert Shinn to Eileen McGinnis, Chief of the Governor's Office of Policy and Planning:
The extent of local public opposition to this project
exceeds that associated with any prior project, including the one project in the history of this 11 year financing program which was elevated to a Level 3 Review. Failure to call for a Level 3 review in this case can be expected to result in substantial criticism of the Department. In addition, there is some likelihood that the Department will be sued by either a local opposition group, one of the statewide environmental groups, or both. (Emphasis added).
To give our readers further background, we have included a Letter to the Editor from Jon Carnegie of MSM which appeared in The Times (of Trenton), and our 2 page reply, which has yet to appear (as of 9-22-98). And we have the complete text of our testimony, which was part of the appeal to Commissioner Shinn and will be part of the Court submission, on why the sewer project is inconsistent with the State Plan. If you would like a copy of the 28 page legal brief, which precedes four sets of additional comments and exhibits, give us call at 908-766-5787.
We urge our readers to call both Commissioner Robert Shinn at NJDEP and Governor Christine Todd Whitman if you agree with our criticism of this project. Call for a Level 3 Review, and ask that the Trust postpone its funding. The taxpayers of NJ should not be subsidizing suburban sprawl; Merrill Lynch doesn't need any taxpayer subsidies; and when will the City of Trenton ever get any of this corporate office development? The numbers are: Commissioner Shinn at 609-292-2885; Governor Whitman at 609-292-6000.
The Project Is Inconsistent With The State Plan
William R. Neil, Director of Conservation, New Jersey Audubon Society
Commissioner Shinn's Administrative Order No. 1996-06
On July 29, 1996, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Robert C. Shinn, Jr. issued Administrative Order No. 1996-06, directing " ... that the Assistant Commissioners, in exercising their official duties and responsibilities, take those necessary steps to insure that all policies and regulations, to (sic) which guide and regulate their respective programs to the extent permitted by law, are applied to be made consistent and compatible with the New Jersey State Plan. I further direct that it will be the policy of the Department of Environmental Protection to support the goals and objectives of the New Jersey State Plan."
On December 10, 1997, in New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, the Commissioner's order was upheld after being challenged by the New Jersey Builder's Association. In so upholding the decision, Judges Dreier, Keefe and P.G. Levy commented on the manner in which the State Plan may be used by State Agencies. The Judges' elaborations support the importance and appropriateness of using State Plan goals, objectives, values and policies to guide State agency decisions, and therefore crucial aspects of public policy. The
decision, quoting from the Plan itself at N.J.A.C. 17:32-7.1(c), comments that the State Plan is to be used "only to guide municipal and county master planning, State agency functional planning and infrastructure investment decisions... (page 4, A-244-96T1, our emphasis). Therefore the matter before us now, affecting many different property owners and a land area of between 3.2-4.2 square miles - Hopewell Township's application for a $24.7 million dollar, publicly, taxpayer, funded loan from the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust for an 9 mile sewer line - falls within the legal purview of both the Executive Order and the Court's sense of proper State Plan applicability.
The Project Violates at Least Four Major State Plan Goals:
1). REVITALIZE THE STATE'S URBAN AREAS (#1)
2). CONSERVE THE STATE'S NATURAL RESOURCES (#2)
3). PROVIDE ADEQUATE PUBLIC SERVICES AT REASONABLE COST (#5)
4). ACHIEVE STATE PLANNING GOALS BY COORDINATING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ACTIONS TO GUIDE FUTURE GROWTH INTO COMPACT FORMS OF DEVELOPMENT AND REDEVELOPMENT, LOCATED TO MAKE THE MOST EFFICIENT USE OF INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS AND TO SUPPORT THE MAINTENANCE OF CAPACITIES OF INFRASTRUCTURE, ENVIRONMENTAL, NATURAL RESOURCE, FISCAL, ECONOMIC AND OTHER SYSTEMS. (#9)
The New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan or SDRP (June 12, 1992 version, Communities of Place), lays out 9 broad goals in its introduction. The very first goal is to "REVITALIZE THE STATE'S URBAN CENTERS AND AREAS by investing wisely and sufficiently in improvements to their human resources and infrastructure systems to attract private investments; the second goal is to CONSERVE THE STATE'S NATURAL RESOURCES by planning the location and intensity of growth to maintain the capacities of natural resource systems and then investing in infrastructure and natural resource protection programs in ways that guide growth according to this planning."
The fifth goal is to "PROVIDE ADEQUATE PUBLIC SERVICES AT REASONABLE COST by planning locations and patterns of growth that maintain existing and planned capacities of infrastructure, fiscal, social and natural resource systems." We assert that the sewer line, its length, cost, method of funding, and indeed, the location, size and intensity of the Planned Center at I-295-95, Hopewell Township violates and contradicts these crucial State Plan goals, indeed the very planning heart of the State Plan.
Is it "Compact and efficient?"
On page 12 of the SDRP, a ninth goal of the Plan is introduced, its "GENERAL PLAN STRATEGY: ACHIEVE STATE PLANNING GOALS BY COORDINATING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ACTIONS TO GUIDE FUTURE GROWTH INTO COMPACT FORMS OF DEVELOPMENT, LOCATED TO MAKE THE MOST EFFICIENT USE OF INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS AND TO SUPPORT THE MAINTENANCE OF CAPACITIES OF INFRASTRUCTURE, ENVIRONMENTAL, NATURAL RESOURCE, FISCAL, ECONOMIC AND OTHER SYSTEMS (our emphasis). On the very same page, the actual State Planning Act is cited for "three key provisions that mandate the approaches the Plan must use in achieving State Planning Goals. The Plan must:
... encourage development, redevelopment and economic growth in locations that are well situated with respect to present or anticipated public services and facilities and to discourage development where it may impair or destroy natural resources or environmental qualities;... reduce `sprawl'; and ... promote development and redevelopment in a manner consistent with sound planning and where infrastructure can be provided at private expense or with reasonable expenditures of public funds. (our emphasis)
Who Pays?
And where the public picks up a $25 million dollar tab for sewers, and at least $31.5 million for roads, can it be said that we are providing infrastructure at "private expense or with reasonable expenditures of public funds"? We think not.
Should not compete with Urban Centers
Later in the Plan, in the subsection called Corridor and Nodes in the Infrastructure Needs Assessment part of Chapter IV, it states that the "Commission selected a corridor development strategy to organize growth into more compact forms. Development in these compact forms should not compete with Urban Centers and should make public transportation services in these corridors more feasible in the future." (page 124). In Appendix E, the Glossary of State Plan terms, the definition of "Regional Center," stresses, among other things, again, the substantive word "compact," and requires that these Regional Centers should not be "competing with Urban Centers."
Now it is a fact that the City of Trenton, besides being the State Capital, is one of the eight original Designated Urban Centers in the State Plan (page 140), as well as being ranked Number 2 on the list of the top 100 Municipalities on the Municipal Distress List, right after the City of Camden (1997 version of list, Office of State Planning Web Site). It also has nearly one million square feet of existing, empty commercial office space. Trenton has many admirable features, an extensive and expensive road system, location on the main train line between Philadelphia and New York (in other words, one might call Trenton an existing "urban transportation development district"), and many signs of civic and economic vitality, but conspicuously missing is the presence of private sector office growth of the type that paved the Route 1 Corridor in the 1980's, and now is being planned for in unrealistic abundance along the highway corridors of the suburban Mercer County municipalities. Indeed, based on the build out analysis we have seen for commercial office space inside the sewer district at hand, there will now be as much as 5.78 million square feet (m.s.f.) of office space competing with Trenton's vacancies, and another 1.44 m.s.f. ready to come on line on the west side of Scotch Road, up to 3.9 m.s.f. possible along Rt. 31, and up to 2.5 m.s.f. possible at the Lucent site. These last two categories, analyzed in the report called "Wastewater Management Planning in Hopewell Valley" (done by Heyer, Gruel & Talley, PA, January, 9, 1998, and added to by the Addendum report of January 12, 1998 and done for the
Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association and MSM Regional Council) as the Lucent Technologies Area and the Route 31 Corridor, have no attempted State Plan rationale that we are aware of. That makes a total of 13.6 million square feet in just a few portions of this one township of a total land area of 58.1 square miles. We might add that 4.2 square miles doesn't meet our dictionary definition of "compact," a word the State Plan repeatedly stresses both for centers and infrastructure matters. To give a clearer frame of reference for what is proposed both in this sewer service area and Hopewell in general, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan contain 10 million square feet of office space, and the Bridgewater Commons Mall comes in at 900,000 square feet, exclusive of parking areas. That's not bad for Hopewell, but that's certainly not compact design.
Is this a Regional Center According to the SDRP Guidelines?
While the State Plan lists it as a Planned Regional Center for Mercer County on page 143 of the SDRP, the type of development planned inside the sewer service area clearly does not meet the very first criterion listed on page 97 of the SDRP: "... it is planned to function as a focal point for the economic, social and cultural activities of its region, with a compact, highly intense, mixed-use (e.g., commercial, office, industrial, public) core and neighborhoods offering a wide variety of housing types..." Now there has been extensive press coverage given to what some citizens and planning organizations (like MSM) would like to see the Planned Regional Center become, but there has been little evidence we have seen that the business community drivers of this development, like
Merrill Lynch, have ever, formally, or informally, been planning for social and cultural activities at their location in this center. There has been no discussion of public facilities, especially governmental ones here. If one were to visual the mixture of uses intended in the first criterion here, one should think of all that is contained in an existing regional center like Flemington, in Hunterdon County. In addition, this project, using the figures set forth in Table 2 of the August 18, 1998 Document sent by Nicholas Binder of NJ Department of Environmental Protection to "All Interested Parties," will obtain a jobs-to-housing ratio of 21.57:1, way, way over the recommended standard of 1:1 to 5:1 (SDRP standard to be found at Document #99, Centers Design Process, February, 1993, pps.42-43). We arrive at our figures using those in the Table 2 of August 18, 1998 and the assumptions used for calculations by Van Cleef Engineering Associates in their Level 2 Environmental Review dated January 30, 1998 (see pages 46-47). The crucial assumptions are 2.8 persons per household for 894 new households buildable, and 1 job per 300 square feet of office space,
with 6% of the new job holders inducing new dwellings. We use the Table 2 figure of 5,787,000 square feet of office space, derived from the approved and potential figures. Thus this project will produce a Planned Center that is job heavy, housing poor, and absent a social, cultural and governmental dimension that marks true centers, planned and existing, according to SDRP criteria.
We also note the incongruity of this planned center with criterion #2, that "it meets all the Policy Objectives of the Planning Area in which it is located...." - which is Planning Area 1, the Metropolitan Planning Area. Later we will show, in detail, that the physical area in question for this Center doesn't meet any of the criteria for Planning Area 1, but to meet this criterion #2 for Planned Centers, it would have to meet the Policy Objectives listed on page 104 of the SDRP. An even casual look at criteria 1-3 shows that they are clearly describing policy objectives for an existing urban area with some pockets of unbuilt land, not the reality we face in Hopewell at this project site, which is 45% undeveloped farmland and forests - open space.
We must also note a contradiction. We have noted Merrill Lynch's non-interest in moving towards Planned Center diversity of uses (Merrill Lynch is one potential developer of 450 acres on the east side of Scotch Road), but were that to change, and all these missing cultural, social and governmental dimensions to be added (and what would that do to the financing of the pipeline?), and the talked about addition of rail service also included, would we not have a virtual new city, bound to compete with the City of Trenton, which already is a rail and governmental center, and struggling to emerge as a cultural presence? That is the criticism we have of those planners urging a more well rounded center at this rural location.
A Remarkable Sewer Line
Now let's examine this sewer line a little more carefully in light of these goals and emphasis of the State Plan. The first aspect that fairly leaps out at us is the extraordinary length of the proposal. While much of the public discussion and press coverage has been stating the sewer line length to be 8 miles, the numbers put on the table by NJDEP in their August 18 document show the length to be 96,800 linear feet, which translates into more than 9 miles. Where does this stand in our NJ Department of Environmental Protection universe of comparable projects? We have never heard or read of this frame of reference being explored, but we raise it now, and in formal letter by fax to the NJDEP, (Neil to O'Donnell, Hart, August 12, 1998). We can state, from a conversation with a DEP staff person that the usual length of comparable projects to service a new office project or expand a sewer service area is between 300 feet and 1 mile. In the August 12 letter of William Neil to NJDEP officials, a structured comparative framework of the most recent 100 similar projects is requested, including the cost and funding information. It seems obvious
to us that such a framework was called for even by the Level II review, and certainly by the Level III, but we also think by the repeated emphasis in the State Plan, as cited, on the words compact and efficient, in the physical and fiscal sense.
Project does not meet key Mandates from State Planning Act
We also want to give added emphasis here to what the State Plan emphasized itself from the State Planning Act, where it chose to use the term "mandates" and "must use," to achieve its goals, as we have quoted from page 12. That is significantly different language than is found in most other places of the voluntary State Plan. Can any development which requires such a long sewer line be called "well situated with respect to present or anticipated public services"? Can anyone say that the location, or size of a 3.2- 4.2 sq. mile center, with potentially 5.78 million square feet of office space will "reduce sprawl," especially since a visit to the actual field location, north of Interstate 95 and on both sides of Scotch Road, shows this sizeable portion of the district to be as rural as the interior parts of Hunterdon and Warren County? To justify this project urbanizing this area (a conscious choice of term over suburban because of the intensity of what is summoned) simply because it is near a interstate highway raises the issue that a good portion of the most rural parts of New Jersey are near one of our interstates or major state highways, and if all municipalities claim the same justification for their office parks - and the vast majority
do, even in the most rural counties, we then have a complete breakdown of some of the organizing principles of the State Plan. In this, Hopewell and Mercer County are not unique, but the contradictions and consequences of the breakdown in logic are more dramatic and consequential because of the presence and particular circumstances of nearby Trenton.
Project Violates Statewide Policies of the State Plan
We find that the project before us, in its particulars but especially in its region wide-implications and consequences (for the expenditure of public funds, failure to protect open space, impact upon urban distressed Trenton) violates both the letter and the spirit of the Comprehensive Planning and Resource Planning and Management Sections of the Statewide Policies of the State Plan.
The questions we raise, the questions raised by the public through many different public hearings over the past 18 months, all bring home the truth that this project has not solved the problems that should be addressed in the planning phase, rather the regulatory phase of public proceedings, cited on pages 14-15 of the Comprehensive Planning Section of the State Plan, with particular emphasis on the lack of "coordinated public planning." How so?
Project Violates Comprehensive Planning Policies
We believe, in particular, that the process that has unfolded because of this project, and the application before NJDEP and the Trust now, violates General Planning Policies 4 (Capacity Considerations in Planning), Policy 6 (Integrated and Coordinated Planning) and Policy 7 (Multi-Jurisdictional Planning). Back in April, 1998, William Neil, Director of Conservation for NJ Audubon Society, had become alarmed at the lack of coordination and control on the amount of commercial office space that was being planned for along the state's major highway corridors, generated at the municipal level. His focus was on Mercer County, particularly Hopewell Township, but also on the Warren and Hunterdon municipalities along interstate Route 78 and state highway 31. Indeed, so alarmed had he become by the extraordinary amount of commercial office space legally invited by each municipality, that he was asked by the staff of several State legislators to draft an outline of legislation requiring municipalities to conduct build- out analyses of the residential and commercial potential of their zoning, with emphasis on the highway corridors, to demonstrate to the citizens of these jurisdictions that the levels were unrealistic and profoundly damaging to the environmental and fiscal future health of the state, as well as devastating in their implications for revitalizing the State's distressed urban areas.
In doing background research for this undertaking, outreach was made to the Mercer County Planning board in April, 1998. Given the fact that Hopewell was planning for some 13.62 million square feet of commercial office space in just part of their township, and Washington Township, just to the East of Trenton was planning for 28 million square feet outside their new Robbinsville center, did not this call for the equivalent of 4 sets of World Trade Center towers (10 million sq. ft. of office space for the two towers) alarm Trenton with threatened competition; and just how much more office space was buildable in the other communities lining the Counties' major roadways? The answer was not very reassuring; because Mercer County doesn't track that figure, it was up to the municipalities.
We submit that answer is in violation of these three basic policies, and that an answer to it is vital to Hopewell's plan too. We say that because we assert that other municipalities, like Washington Township, are not scaling back because of what other Mercer municipalities are planning, and least of all does anyone seem very troubled by the cumulative impacts of such commercial invitations upon Trenton's failed efforts to lure the private sector back within the City's tax base. There is, as far as we know, not even a serious discussion of planning a revenue-tax-sharing base between Trenton and its suburban sister communities. With Mercer County's inability to answer to our question about how much is coming outside Trenton, we now list and by underlining give emphasis to the crucial parts of three statewide General Planning Policies from the State Plan that are not being met:
Policy 4 -- Capacity Consideration in Planning
Use the most up-to-date information available on the capacities of natural, infrastructure, social and economic systems, and on desirable level of service standards to inform growth and development planning and decisions.
Policy 6 -- Integrated and Coordinated Planning
Develop plans that are integrated and coordinated with plans at all levels of government, with special attention paid to the impacts of State functional plans on land use and with greater participation of the departments of health, human services and public safety and boards of education and other agencies not traditionally involved in comprehensive planning processes.
Policy 7 -- Multi-Jurisdictional Planning
Participate actively in multi-jurisdictional planning programs that will help to achieve fiscal efficiencies in the delivery of public services and assure compatibility with plans of adjacent communities.
Project Violates Resource Planning and Management Policies
We also think it is obvious, with the Hopewell situation struggling between two different sewer districts and the proposal to build and fund the lengthy and expensive 9 mile line that the project violates core values of the statewide policies on Resource Planning and Management (pps. 17-28): "This approach to planning, sometimes known as `capacity-based planning,' is, in reality, a matter of logic - public policy should not generate demand that exceeds capacity." (page 17) Going further, "the capacity-based planning approach -linking demand and capacity - recognizes that the ultimate, cumulative results of development, known as `build-out,' need to be understood at municipal, county, regional and State levels." We submit that not only what we and the citizens of Hopewell have laid out before you demonstrates that there are substantial gaps in the Hopewell analysis of what is called for in this sewer district, but the cumulative impacts of it along with the zoning in other suburban Mercer County communities means that the State Plan's vision is breaking down before our very eyes.
Let us introduce some numbers to give more precision to what we state here. It also ties this analysis in to the requirements that trigger a Level 3 Environmental Review at 7:22-10.6, especially 10.6(b)1-5. We also note that under Level 2 Environmental Review requirements, at 7:22-10.5(b)10, "indirect (or secondary impacts) and cumulative effects with other projects" must be included with the assessment.
We believe that there are certain basics to good environmental planning. Good capacity planning should recognize "environmental constraints," and not just the ones that are legally required by New Jersey's wetlands and stream encroachment laws, or the very practical ones imposed by building on steep slopes. As acknowledged in several places in the EcolSciences Level 2 Environmental Review of January 30, 1998 and their Addendum dated July 8, 1998, the entire sewer service area has obvious problems: "The mapping of soils ... indicate that all of the soils within the project area have severe limitations for septic disposal, mainly due to shallow
bedrock and a high water table." (our emphasis; taken from page 14 of the July 8, 1998 Addendum). But nowhere is this used as a constraint on the level of growth planned for or expected in Hopewell Township. Instead, despite acknowledgement of these physical problems, Hopewell has grown in the past on septics and is using these alleged septic problems as the justification for sewering at state and federal taxpayer expense. (See Purpose and Need of Project, page 16-17 of the January 30, 1998 Level 2 Environmental Review) We think that the lack of serious consideration of a very reduced level of residential and commercial density, on the order of 1 unit per 7-10 acres, is a missing environmental-planning response to the high water table, in the rural, undeveloped parts of Hopewell Township. We note that other communities in New Jersey with water table, septic/geology constraints, like Franklin and Kingwood Township in
Hunterdon County, have moved in this direction, and that, in part based on this reasoning, Bedminister Township in Somerset County has downzoned significantly as well. But Hopewell is going to ask public taxpayers to pay for this extraordinary sewer line, so they can leap over their environmental constraints. We think there should have been a lower growth, downzoning option discussed in the Level 2 Environmental Review at 7:22-10.5(b)8. We believe the failure to do so is inconsistent with the above cited sections of the SDRP, especially the discussion on pages 17-18, Capacity-based Planning for Sustained Growth.
But the next section of the SDRP, Growth Projections, on pages 19-21 is relevant as well. Speaking of population and employment estimates, the SDRP notes that good projections on these parameters "are necessary for both the public and private sectors to plan and invest today with some reasonable consideration of what the future might hold. For the purposes of the State planning process ... a reasonable set of population, household and employment projections is required to guide the allocation of growth among Centers and to estimate future developable land needs within Centers." (page 19).
So how is Hopewell Township doing within the context of the direct and induced job and population growth triggered by this project, and within its own and Mercer County figures? In the first official State Planning Round of Cross Acceptance Reports, dated June 16, 1989, the Hopewell population is given as 11,500. Working with the 20 year planning framework, the projection is for Hopwell's population to be 16,050 in 2010. The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission estimated it to be 13,400 in 2010.
Population Projections
Now let's look at how well these numbers hold up based on the revised growth estimates shown in Table 2 in the NJDEP document of August 18, 1998, the "official" flow chart for the reduced sewer service area (reduced from the Summary Table, page 3 totals 11,266,800 m.s.f. of office space and 2,378 residential units shown in the January 30, 1998 Level 2 Environmental Review).
Based on the new Table 2 figures, we project a population increase for the township of 5,743 people, putting it well over the high Hopewell 1989 estimate of 16,050 people. Adding 5743 to 11,500 existing, we get 17,2433. We arrived at our increase from just the sewer service area direct and induced growth by using 5,787,000 m.s.f. of office space buildable, giving us 19, 290 new employees, 6% of whom will build new homes in the township, adding 1157 new homes and 3240 additional people (at 2.8 people per household). To this we add the 894 new housing units that are projected to be built inside the sewer district, which at 2.8 people per house hold equals 2,503 more.
Thus inside the sewer district, the population growth will go from 1,510 to 4,013 - an increase of 266%. We think that meets the criteria for Level 3 review under 7:22-10.6(b)1 : "significant adverse effects on... growth and distribution of population in the project area."
Now we believe that this is more a direct than "secondary" impact of bringing sewers to the sewer district; but clearly, under the secondary impacts and cumulative impacts is the sewering of the area west of Scotch Road, now "officially" out of this Table Two, but still clearly shown as a future service area with two pump stations on maps revised August 1, 1998 (Overall System Map, Hopewell-Trenton, Revised August 1, 1998). Following the guidelines at 7:22-10.5(b)10 for a Level 2 Environmental Review, we also want to add in the totals, for populations first, then jobs below, for two other "project" areas that have been part of the Hopewell discussion for almost 2 years know, the Rt. 31 Corridor and the "Lucent Technologies Area (using the terms and figures presented for these two areas by the "Wastewater Management Planning in Hopewell Valley" document of January 9, 1998 as well as the Addendum of January 12, 1998).
For the West side of Scotch Road, which is now out of Table 2 figures,
we rely upon the March 18, 1998 Memorandum sent to the Hopewell Township Planning Board by William Queale, Jr. This will add 3220 people based on 2.8 per 1,150 homes buildable; the 1.44 m.s.f. of office space will induce an additional 806 people, using the conventions from January 30, 1998 EcolSciences Level 2 Environmental Review, for a total of 4,026 people.
For Route 31, based upon 3.9 m.sq.ft. of office space and 200 direct residential units, we add 2,744 people to the townships future population.
For Lucent, based on 2.5 m.sq.ft induced population, we add 1,397 people.
Combining the sewer service area and these figures for Scotch Road West, Rt. 31 and Lucent gives us an additional 13, 910 people for Hopewell Township under the "scaled back" assumptions now on the table. This more than doubles the Township's population of 11,500 - and this leaves out all the other residential and commercial growth areas not covered by our calculations.
Job Projections: Hopewell Demolishes the County Numbers
For jobs, the Mercer County Cross Acceptance report for 1989 saw Mercer County expanding from a job base of 219,440 in 1990 to 248,350 jobs in 2010 - a increase of 28,910 jobs.
Using the new "scaled back" commercial square footage based on Table 2 of 5.787 sq. ft, and the EcolSciences convention of 300 sq. ft. producing one employee, we get 19,290 new jobs inside the sewer area, 4,800 for the West side of Scotch Road, 13,000 for the Rt. 31 Corridor, and 8,333 for the Lucent site. The total number of jobs for just Hopewell Township is 45,423, which dwarfs the entire Mercer County 2010 job growth increase of just 28,910. And we have reminded our readers what is on the books for Washington Township as well. We think these numbers for both population and job increases driven by Hopewell alone are enough to worry State, County, and Trenton planners about how to pay for necessary infrastructure and about how growth is going to be allocated.
There is something wrong here in the local and regional picture, out of keeping with the letter and spirit of the SDRP. And yet something else is still missing from these jobs and population figures.
Missing the COAH Numbers
As we understand it, there is a formula at the State office of the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) which relates job growth to the numbers of needed affordable Housing units. We think that given this numbers of jobs, just inside the sewer district for starters, but also covering the other three areas named above, means that the consulting work for this project is likely to be considerably understating the population growth, and also the environmental impacts from additional land development. It is another good reason while the Level 2 work done is still unsatisfactory, and why a Level 3 analysis is needed.
No Mechanism to Allocate Growth Between Centers
We now direct your attention to Policy 5, Allocating Growth Among Centers, on page 23, still in the section called Resource Planning and Management. It states that "Planning for infrastructure investment among Centers requires that projected growth be allocated among these Centers." Then it lays out guidelines on how to do so. We submit that these guidelines are clearly not being followed in the this project, because there is no growth allocation for Trenton, which has the existing vacant office building space as well as the sewage treatment capacity. We cannot find any growth "allocating" system among the municipalities that make up Mercer County, least of all in relation to the
level of commercial office space they have zoned for. Note also the emphasis, once again, on cost effectiveness and "where market demands justify the need." To the best of our knowledge, the ML project is a speculative one, and within a 25 mile radius, there is an enormous level of existing commercial office space, some of it vacant, as well as a significant level of new office space coming on line, as the Foster Wheeler joint project near the Bridgewater Mall shows. Here are the guidelines, from page 23 of the State Plan, with our underlined emphasis:
(1) allocate growth to existing Centers with sufficient existing or planned system capacities;
(2) allocate any remaining growth to existing Centers where infrastructure can be most cost-effectively expanded and extended and where market demands justify the need;
(3) allocate any remaining growth to planned (new) Centers where new infrastructure, sufficient to maintain system capacities, should be built or paid for by the private sector; and
(4) allocate any remaining growth to planned (new) Centers where it is in the public interest to build new infrastructure through joint public/private investment.
And, again, where the public picks up a $25 million dollar tab for sewers, and at least $31.5 million for roads, can it be said that we are providing infrastructure at "private expense or with reasonable expenditures of public funds?" Instead, we would think that a vastly scaled back project, perhaps even smaller than the Merrill Lynch ML) 450 acre site itself, and connected at well under a mile and at private cost to ELSA (Ewing-Lawrence Sewerage Authority) might far, far better meet all these State Plan goals, policies and guidelines. But we would still have grave reservations about that choice of site, as we will now elaborate by going over in greater detail this matter before us, the 9 mile sewer line, the expansion of the sewer service area and the public Trust funding of it.
The Project Violates the Criteria for Planning Area 1
We say that a greatly scaled back ML site and much shorter privately funded sewer hook-up would be better but still violate the State Plan because of the way that the ML 450 acres, as well as the rest of the 3.2-4.2 square mile service area have been delineated almost entirely as Planning Area 1, Metropolitan Planning Area. And so now we raise the whole history of the mapping and delineation of the sewer service area (and TDD designation) by Hopwell Township and Mercer County. We intend to raise this with the State Planning Commission formally at a later date, but we raise it now to challenge this area's conformance with the current State Plan's criteria for Planning Areas. Was not much of the sewer district in question given a designation of Tier 4-5 in earlier State Plan history, the equivalent of PA-3-4 today? Why were the changes made to Planning Area 1, whose criteria now read in the State Plan:
(1) Densities of more than 1,000 persons per square mile; and
(2) Existing public water and sewer systems, or with physical accessiblilty to said systems, and with access to public transit systems; and
(3) Adjacent to the Suburban Planning Area; and
(4) Land Area greater than one square mile; and
(5) A population of not less than 25,000 people; OR
(6) Areas that are totally surrounded by land areas that meet the Criteria of a Metropolitan Planning Area, are geographically interrelated with the Metropolitan Planning Area and meet the intent of this Planning Area
Now we submit that the only criterion that this proposed sewer district meets is #4, which is a "boiler-plate" term that appears for each of the other Planning Areas. Indeed, the developer's consultant for the ML site has characterized as primarily farmland interspersed with forested stream corridors and wetlands, and we submit that this ML site, and indeed the vast majority of the sewer district itself should be Planning Area 4 and or 4(b) due to headwaters, wetlands, farmland, and aquifer recharge areas. According to the Municipal Reference Guide for New Jersey, Northern edition 1995-96, which relies upon 1992 estimates for population, Hopewell Township as a whole had a density of 199 people per square mile, less than a fifth of the needed density for Planning Area 1, and we submit that the density in the sewer district in question, the 3.2-4.2 square miles, is also well under the State Plan's over 1,000 per square mile requirement for PA-1.
The Project should be Referred to the Office of State Planning
We believe that the NJDEP should be refer this matter to the Office of State Planning with a request to reexamine this mapping and designations, including some in the service area that have been mapped as PA-3, (Fringe Planning Area). This applies to some of the land to the West of Scotch Road, a total of 742 acres outside the service area but identified as "Area Reserved for Future Sewer Service." According to the Queale Memo of March 18, 1998 there are at least 230 acres slated for residential growth in the back (western portion) of this area that are PA-3. Please note that page 108 of the SDRP plan says that growth in this planning area should occur in centers, and that "Infrastructure for Centers should be provided primarily by the private sector." Indeed, we believe the State Planning Commission needs to take a close look at the other points we raise, and its own failure to have a coherent highway corridor policy with growth allocating mechanisms.
This raises the question as to why Hopewell Township has not come in to the State Planning Commission for a rigorous analysis of all these planning issues, on the path to achieving formal approval as a Planned Regional Center. NJDEP can follow their own new rules, which became effective August 3, 1998 for their agency's Financial Assistance Programs for Environmental Infrastructure Facilities at 7:22-10.9(a)24, which would require Hopewell Township (the project sponsor) to "consult, coordinate with, or apply to ..." to the Office of State Planning. The appropriate time for this would be during the period of a Level 3 Review, and the timing is good, because the State Planning Commission is reviewing its guidelines on determining consistency with the State Plan through a proposed new process called "Plan Endorsement," (Memo from Herb Simmens, Director of Office of State Planning to the Plan Development Committee, July 28, 1998).
The legal authority for the Office of State Planning to determine municipal and county consistency with the State Plan rests upon 52:18A-196(f) and 52:18A-201(b). Because the scope of what is on the land-use table for Hopewell is so broad, it needs both a Planned Regional Center consistency review as well as a Municipal wide conformance determination.
It has been asserted by defenders of the project that the NJDEP is requiring consistency with the State Plan for any "sewer service area changes" as stated in the August 3, 1998 letter to Mayor John Hart, Jr., of Hopewell Township from Dennis Hart, the NJDEP's Director of the Division of Water Quality. Based on the glaring inconsistencies of the project with the State Plan we have outlined above, these Aug. 3 requirements are too little, too late, and are riddled by the lack of enforceable measures.
Condition 1, limiting future sewer service connections to those obtaining a Water Quality Management Plan Amendment, is merely a restatement of current policy. The additional condition, for the Department to "consider any change," there will have to be evidence of "transfers of development potential from elsewhere in the Township of Hopewell," should not be terribly reassuring for any student of the history of TDR (Transfer of Development Rights) in New Jersey. Genuine, regulatory based TDR is limited by the State Municipal Land Use law to just experiments in Burlington County (NJSA:40:55D-113-129 et seq.) While subsequent legislation has authorized the transer of densities to non-contiguous parcels, it remains on an entirely voluntary basis, needing land-owner consent. Thus, there is no certainty or legal predictability deliverable from these concepts.
In part of Condition 2, the DEP asserts that "no sewer area changes will be allowed unless they are consistent with the State Development and Redevelopment Plan, and which shall include, but not be limited to, the development of an Open Space Preservation Plan within the context of the Master Plan Cross-Acceptance process and in coordination with the Development of a Town Center designation. While it is very nice to state these conditions, there is no binding specificity to them, and they are again, being applied after the NJDEP has failed to apply their authority to block Trust funding of the sewer project that is in such fundamental ways at odds with the major values of the State Plan.
Violates State Plan Policies on Infrastructure Investments
We submit that the proposed sewer line and sewer district violate the key parameters and values of the State Plan's statewide Policies on Infrastructure Investments, found on pages 35-40. The opening sentence of this section continues the State Plan emphasis we have introduced on the words "efficient" and "compact," while adding new focus on "existing" and "distressed" areas: "The essential element of Statewide Policy for Infrastructure Investment is to provide infrastructure and related services more efficiently by restoring systems in distressed areas, maintaining existing infrastructure investments, creating more compact settlement patterns in appropriate locations in suburban and rural areas, and timing and sequencing the maintenance of capital facilities service levels with development throughout the State." (page 40). As Bill Wolfe, Policy Director of the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club has pointed out in his July 31, 1998 comments on this proposal to the NJDEP, "the proposal would not utilize existing infrastructure efficiently and would duplicate service from a current provider," which, of course, is ELSA.
We would hope that all parties see the obvious, that an new 9 mile sewer line is the opposite of this, that the City of Trenton, the state's second most distressed city, ought to be reserving its existing sewage treatment capacity to entice its own conspicuously missing private sector rateables, rather than, at public expense, treating the distant sewage coming from one of the State's wealthiest municipalities, which would seem to be doing very well in the private sector rateable chase independent of this proposed Planned Center. And of course, how can we fail to point out that the proposal before us today violates the second goal of the State Plan we cited above, to "Conserve the State's Natural Resources" by planning carefully before we put our infrastructure money in places that undermine "Contiguous Open Space," thereby violating Policy 19 of the Statewide Policies on Infrastructure (page 40), which urges us to "develop infrastructure, related services and public and private utilities in ways that assure the protection and management of contiguous tracts and corridor of natural resources, forest, recreational and other open-space land."
Open Space, Environmental Assessments, Wildlife Habitats
We are troubled and concerned by the treatment given by Hopewell Township and its consultants to reporting and characterizing the primary and secondary impacts on land use and open space, called for here in SDRP policies, but also 7:22-10.5(b)10 and 10(ii) and 11(vi) and (vii). Our concerns also touch 7:22-10.5(b)3vi and viii, because such descriptions of plant and animal communities and the other environmental factors listed at viii are not going to have a full listing or thorough field review if the field work is limited to the month of December (1997), as it apparently was. We think the NJDEP should have something very critical to say about that; it is impossible to do a full and accurate field survey that relies just upon that month, one of the lowest points of biological activity in the biological year. The field work for environmental inventories and Threatened and Endangered species needs to be done between April 15 and September 15th, and for a project this large, in the square miles range, it should be in several of these months, with the best (fullest) being between May 15th and July 15th.
We note that while the August 18th 1998 NJDEP document contains maps with detailed summaries of land use-habitat impacts for the sewer line itself, there is nothing comparable supplied for the construction slated and possible within the sewer district as shown in Table 2, the so called "secondary" impacts, but nonetheless impacts that are important for determining whether the triggers for a Level 3 Environmental Review have been met, especially at 7:2210.6(b)1 ("...significant adverse effects on the pattern and type of land use ...") and (b)5 ("...significant adverse affect upon local... wildlife or their natural habitats..."). Indeed, it is not until after the public hearings in July of 1998 that we see an attempt at such an accounting for these aspects of secondary impacts, as a new follow up response is addressed to an apparent NJDEP deficiency letter from July 30, 1998 (letter from Van Cleef Engineering Associates to Steven Betz, NJDEP, dated August 7, 1998). There, on pages 6-7, and the Table on page 8 "Estimate of Secondary Impacts," we finally see a figure put on an increase of impervious surface cover due to the sewers being supplied - 294 acres. Now even though EcolSciences spent some time outlining the Habitat Types and Plant Communities on pages 7-9 of their January 30, 1998 Level 2 Environmental Review, there is no mapping or inventory to show how these 294 acres lost to impervious surface cover relate to these Habitat and Plant community distinctions. In blunt terms, this looks like pretty superficial treatment.
How much land/habitat will be altered, lost?
Indeed, by using the term "impervious surface cover," we believe they are significantly understanding the impacts relevant to Level 2 and 3 requirements. After all, the impervious surface covered by the building of one house on a 2 acre lot is certainly a small subset of the full 2 acres, yet when construction is done today in large residential or commercial development, more often than not the entire site is cleared or significantly altered or upset. While it is important to take note of how much impervious surface cover there will be for certain environmental considerations such as run-off and water pollution, aquifer recharge and related issues, the land use and natural habitat parameters listed for triggering a Level 3 are broader, and it seems to us would include a consideration of the number of acres disturbed or altered. We believe that figure for land disturbance is closer to 600-700 acres within the sewer district. We arrive at those figures by starting from what is buildable based on the Table 2 in the NJDEP Aug. 18th document;
we see 5.78 m.s.f. of office space; if it is all built in 3 story buildings it would have a footprint of 44.28 acres; parking for 19,290 employees at a 9' x 18' parking space size (one space for each employee) comes to 71.73 acres; there are 894 homes projected; at one house on two acres, we would have at least 447 acres disturbed, which brings us to 573 acres, still not having addressed interior roads, detention basins and other possible stormwater facilities. So we think 600-700 acres severely impacted or "developed" is a much more realistic way to convey the secondary impacts.
Violates Urban Revitalization Policies of the State Plan
We also assert that the proposal before us is directly at odds with the Urban Revitalization policies of the State Plan, found on pages 44-49 of the SDRP. We don't think we can say it better, or more clearly, than the words of the State Plan itself to show how the Hopewell proposal undermines the economic future of the City of Trenton and turns the State Plan values on their head. We quote from page 45:
If the State is to revitalize its distressed communities, the development "playing field" must be leveled so that distressed communities can compete on even terms with suburban and exurban communities for new development. While the private benefit of developing in suburban and exurban areas may loom large, the costs to the public loom large as well. The cost of eventually extending expensive urban infrastructure services to newly-developing, remote locales and the environmental degradation that results if these services are not extended are not usually considered in costing suburban and exurban development. By not adding these costs to private development projects in these areas, the incidence of development costs is shifted from the private sector to the public sector. In other words, taxpayers are subsidizing suburban and exurban development at the expense of distressed urban communities."
Exactly. We don't believe the cost shifts between the private sector and the public sector could ever be more obvious than they are in this Hopewell proposal. Over $50 million dollars (and that may understate the cost) of the public's money is necessary to make this particular choice of visions possible, and that covers just the roads and sewers. Some who have testified on behalf of the City of Trenton may see no problem for the city (public testimony of July 16, 1998, given in Hopewell), but the City of Trenton is already on the record as worrying about the direct competition of this project with them, as noted in the most recent round of cross-acceptance testimony submitted at the Mercer County meeting (page 49, Mercer County Cross Acceptance Report, March 11, 1998). As Bill Wolfe as stated in his July 31st testimony to the NJDEP,
Just one example of this economic competition involves private investment in, and regional demand for, hotel and conference center services. Merrill Lynch proposes a new hotel conference center in the proposed service area. The City of Trenton is actively seeking private investment (and now public funding, our additional comment) for a hotel and conference center at the War Memorial site. The Trenton region, at any particular point in time, has a finite demand for and willingness to invest in such services. The proposal would thus clearly create competition between Hopewell and Trenton for these services.
Trenton Passed Over Again
Is there any sadder or more poignant scene in the history of urban New Jersey, than watching Trenton struggle back in the 1990's, trying to reinvent itself, scrape for every sport and revitalization project it can, and make admirable progress - and yet, having suffered through the great Route 1 development wave of the 1980's, where tens of millions of square feet of private sector, famous corporate names went, including Merrill Lynch, realize that Trenton gained not even a single square foot of that choice type of rateable? And now, shall we watch that whole Route 1 process again, as Hopewell (and Washington Township and what other communities?) roll out the green carpet to the private sector? If, as Alan Mallach has testified to on behalf of Trenton, that Trenton benefits from growth in Hopewell, would it not doubly benefit to get the rateable as well at treat the sewage? Does it not finally, at long last, deserve the private rateables? Does not public policy and the State Plan insist upon policies that make it more, not less likely, to secure what every other municipality in the State wants, but that some Trenton spokespeople claim doesn't matter to them if they lose?
Violates Public Investment Policies of the State Plan
And finally, we assert that the Hopewell proposal contradicts the public investment priorities of the State Plan, found on pages 29-33. Again, the very first sentence on page 29 under this section tells the story: "The essential elements of Statewide Policies for Public investment are urban and community infrastructure priorities and program priorities, both of which are designed to guide agency decisions, where there is agency discretion, on the allocation of public resources to achieve the Goals of the State Planning Act." As Mr. Wolfe has indicated on page 6 of his July 31st testimony, as well as earlier in that document, "there is wide agency discretion in the Trust loan program, as well in the water quality planning program established pursuant to the Water Quality Management Planning Act. The Department must therefore use the policies of the SDRP to guide that discretion by rejecting or severely modifying the proposal to promote locations, patterns and paces of growth that will further the policies of the SDRP. "
Conclusion:
The proposal before the NJDEP, indeed before the whole state as a test case of the values of the State Plan, begs for a Level III review so that all may see in greater detail just what is being proposed and how far it stands so many crucial goals and policies of the State Plan on their head: it undercuts urban revitalization, paves over contiguous open space and farmland, and uses large amounts of public money to do both. We don't think this proposal can even pass muster on Level II - but it objectively and legally needs Level III to expose it for what it is, a vast contradiction of the State Planning Act as demonstrated above. This project stands for the continuation of
sprawl, overlaid with a thin veneer of State Plan semi-justifications. We think the court case we cited at the beginning of this section on the State Plan clearly lays out that the NJDEP has the authority, as was intended by the State Planning Act and the State Plan itself, to refuse to spend public dollars on infrastructure proposals that will continue to duplicate the same troubles and policies that necessitated that State Plan in the first place. This State, this Commissioner, this Governor need to draw a line on where we will not spend our precious tax dollars to duplicate the old failed patterns of sprawl. The line should be draw here, now, with this application.
And we believe we have shown, by demonstrating this projects's many inconsistencies with the State Plan, that it has also met one of the key, mandatory triggers for requiring a Level 3 Review, "that the proposed project is expected to directly or indirectly conflict significantly with Federal, State, regional, or local land use plans or policies. (our emphasis, 7:22-10.6(b)3).
To: Scotia MacRae, The Times
Letter to the editor:
From: William R. Neil, Director of Conservation, NJ Audubon Society; 908-766-6446
Response to: Jon A. Carnegie's (vice president of Middlesex-Somerset-Mercer Regional Council) letter of September 10, 1998, pg. A-12.
Jon Carnegie's (of MSM Regional Council) letter of September 10, 1998 about the NJDEP's stance on the Trenton-Hopewell 9 mile sewer line came as no surprise to us. But he must be reading a different State Plan than we are. And inventing new powers that we never knew NJDEP had. While trying to make the citizens of Hopewell and Mercer County feel as though invoking the values of the State Plan has now made everything better in a scaled back sewer line and district proposal, Mr. Carnegie and MSM ignore certain fundamentals of both planning and the State Plan.
First and foremost, there are 5.78 million square feet (msf) of office space and 896 homes still buildable within the sewer district; we estimate it will consume or alter between 600-700 acres of open space. That's not what we would call "conserving the state's natural resources," Goal No. 2 in the State Plan. The area it will consume is open fields and forests, but is called by Hopewell an "urban planning area." That's apparently ok with MSM. By the way, the more than 2 square miles on either side of Scotch Road don't meet any of the State Plan's criteria for the Urban Planning Area.
Second, Hopewell is planning to add another 1.44 million square feet of office space and 1,150 additional homes in to this sewer district, ASAP - from the West side of Scotch Road. To pile on to these numbers, add in up to 3.9 msf of office space from the Rt. 31 area and up to 2.5 msf from the Lucent site, and we get a
total of 13.6 million square feet of office space arriving in just three parts of Hopewell. While these last 2 areas are not part of the Trenton sewer line district, they're proof that Hopewell is doing fine in the office rateable chase even without the new sewer district. What's on the table in Hopewell is more office space than the twin towers of the World Trade Center which come in at 10 msf. Inside just the supposedly "scaled back" sewer area to the east of Scotch Road, we have the equivalent of one of the twin Trade towers!
And of course, the public is picking up the tab with their tax money, $25 million for the sewer line loan and at least $31.5 for the road improvements. The length of the line, 9 miles, and the public subsidy also means numerous violations of the State Plans policies and values on infrastructure, compactness and efficiency of services. It also means that Hopewell has ruled out scaling back their development in the first place in recognition of what the sewer line consultants recognize as the high water table and unfavorable geology under the entire proposed sewer district. As we read the State Plan, that should be a constraint, not an invitation to get the public to pay for this extraordinarily long pipe line, and the 9 pumping stations to go with it.
And finally, the City of Trenton will not be getting any of the rateables, but they'll get to treat the sewage, and give away some of their treatment capacity. After watching all the millions of square feet of office space pave the Route 1 corridor in the 1980's, Trenton is once again being passed by. That violates the very first goal of our State Plan, to revitalize our existing Urban Areas. Where is Trenton's share of the growth? Where is the
growth allocation mechanism between Trenton, Mercer County and Hopewell? The more the new Planned Regional Center (and what is coming in Hopwell does not meet the State Plan criteria for it) near Scotch Road becomes a true Regional center (and Merrill Lynch has given no green light to doing this), the more it will undercut Trenton's ability to be a true urban center. And don't forget that the President of MSM, Diane Brake, who is also a State Planning Commissioner, voted for another Planned Center in Washington Township in June of 1998. Washington Township, also not far from Trenton, plans for some 28 million square feet of office space outside their Planned Center in Robbinsville. NJ Audubon was the only organization to get up and ask whether that was going to hurt Trenton. It looks to us that we get nearly the same sprawl with "centers" as without. If MSM is right, that what is coming in Hopewell and Washington is the embodiment of the values of the State Plan, then we don't have an effective Plan at all. While it is true that we have a very weak State Plan, we don't find it hard to locate the values and policies that say the sewer line proposal stands even those weak values on their head.
William R. Neil
Director of Conservation
(Reprinted from The Times, September 10, 1998, Letters to the Editor)
DEP decision echoes MSM position
In an August 3 letter to Hopewell Township, the DEP Division of Water Quality conditionally approved Hopewell Township's environmental assessment of the revised Trenton sewer proposal. DEP's decision and the conditions set forth in its letter echo MSM's position that State Plan policies should guide infrastructure decisions.
The conditions set forth by the DEP are as follows: First, Hopewell Township must make changes to its zoning and other ordinances to better protect water quality and improve storm water management. Second, any future changes to wastewater usage and/or sewer service area in southeastern Hopewell should be coordinated with the development of an open space preservation plan and the designation of a center by the State Planning Commission. Finally, the conditions require that the township undertake a regional watershed protection and storm water management planning process that include a number of specifically named local and regional stakeholders, including MSM Regional Council and the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, to ensure a regional perspective.
MSM President Dianne Brake has pointed out that for 30 years MSM has advocated a land-use vision for the Hopewell Valley that focuses growth in compact, mixed-use centers rather than allowing it to sprawl throughout the valley. To implement these centers, we must have sewer service in the right location and at the right scale. DEP's decision supports this land use vision by allowing the right infrastructure to be built.
Since January, MSM's support for the Trenton sewer link has been contingent upon a downsized proposal, regional cooperation and making meaningful progress toward planning and implementing a regional center in a manner consistent with State Plan goals and objectives. The DEP decision reinforces these tenants.
In April, MSM, the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, Hopewell Township and Mercer County co-sponsored a design charette focused on planning for a regional center. At four well-attended meetings, intense discussions on the many topics relevant to a regional center were held involving representatives from each of the Hopewell Valley towns, Ewing Township, state agencies and citizen action groups. In the end, the group agreed on general goals for protecting the quality of life in the Hopewell Valley and on a framework for future discussions by the planning board on implementing a "town and country" center consistent with the State Plan.
While a great deal more must be done to ensure that the plans are in place to effectively manage growth in the Hopewell Valley we believe significant progress is being made and the DEP's decision will help us meet this challenge.
--Jon A Carnegie, Plainsboro Township
The writer is the vice president of Middlesex-Somerset-Mercer Trional Council (MSM).