McGreevey builds coalition to safeguard a critical water supply

A fast-track schedule for preserving the northern Highlands was announced yesterday by the chairmen of the Senate and Assembly environment committees who will oversee a series of five public hearings and pledged to hand bills to the full Legislature next month.

Gov. James E. McGreevey has called for sweeping protections in the region -- which supplies drinking water to more than half the state -- including the creation of a regional council with veto power over development on 350,000 watershed acres.

By carefully negotiating key sticking points over the past six months, McGreevey appears to have built a powerful coalition of elected officials, environmentalists and residents to wage the anticipated battle with builders and landowners.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us, but that work is absolutely necessary to ensure clean drinking water for generations of New Jersey residents to come," said Sen. Bob Smith, (D-Middlesex), who chairs the Senate Environment Committee.

Smith was joined by Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex), who chairs the Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee and said action is needed in the Highlands to avert an "ecological disaster."

McGreevey and environmentalists say there is an urgent need for legislation because development pressures in the region are great. A 2002 study by the U.S. Forest Service reported that 5,000 acres a year is being lost to development in the New Jersey and New York Highlands.

About half the 750,000-acre Highlands region -- an eastern reach of the Appalachian mountains that touches seven northwestern counties -- will lie outside the mandatory jurisdiction of the regional council.

Smith and McKeon stressed that they believe the effort will win bipartisan support, noting that 28 of 40 legislative districts get at least some water from the Highlands. Draft bills creating the council and spelling out broad environmental regulations for the area will be unveiled next Friday, they said.

The state will stress both new regulation and land purchases -- at prices that reflect values prior to regulatory changes -- to preserve the core. Smith predicted the 120,000 remaining acres of privately owned, undeveloped land in the core could be protected for somewhere between $200 million and $300 million.

Smith said one thing to drive down costs would be an aggressive Transfer of Development Rights, or TDR, program, that allows developers to buy their way into growth areas by paying landowners prevented from developing their land. The Assembly passed a TDR bill (A2480) yesterday that would allow towns to set up such sending and receiving areas.

Highlands Task Force member Joe Riggs, president of K. Hovnanian Companies, the state's largest residential builder, said neither TDR nor preservation efforts in the Highlands will work unless the state mandates growth areas.

There is too much market pressure in the region not to set up a safety valve, he said.

Jeff Tittel, president of the state Sierra Club chapter, said mandating growth areas would kill the effort because Highlands towns inside and outside the core are fed up with overdevelopment.

McGreevey said in an interview Friday he is hopeful that once the council draws up a regional plan for the Highlands, some places will see the wisdom of accepting good, planned growth.

"It was important to develop consensus and part of that process was to listen and listen well to municipal officials, as well as environmentalists and the business community," McGreevey said. "The overwhelming need is to provide for a strong, clear preservation effort."

Sen. William Gormley (R-Atlantic) said after the news conference he would not stand in the way of Highlands protection, but he said the administration or the Legislature must provide much-needed assistance to Pinelands growth areas.

In Sussex County, where officials were initially hostile to the notion of more preservation edicts coming down from the state, negotiation apparently resolved things. John Eskilson, deputy Sussex County administrator and a member of the state Planning Commission, said county officials were able to provide input on the boundaries of the 350,000-acre "core" of environmentally sensitive lands.

Although Eskilson had seen a draft of the core map, an administration source said a final version won't be ready for several weeks, possibly April 22 at the latest.

"If they can deliver this plan in the Legislature, we can support it," Eskilson said.

The joint hearings will begin Monday in Trenton at 10 a.m. The next three will be located in the Highlands: 7 p.m. on March 30 at Skylands Manor in Ringwood; 7 p.m. on April 12 at Frelinghuysen Arboretum in Morris Township; and 7 p.m. on April 15 at Voorhees High School in Lebanon. A final hearing will be 10 a.m. on April 22 in Trenton.

Steve Chambers covers land-use issues. He can be reached at schambers@stgarledger.com or (973) 392-1674. Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger.