Some political leaders in the Highlands region are concerned that saving the state's reservoir lands from more development will saddle future generations with higher taxes.

"We all agree there's a need to preserve the drinking water in the Highlands. That goes without saying," Rockaway Township Mayor Lou Sceusi said Monday. "But how are we going to pay for it?"

Sceusi worries that, for instance, land around the Rockaway Townsquare mall, off Route 80, would eventually be off-limits to development should a bill to preserve the Highlands be adopted by the Legislature. Without new ratables to share the tax load, that burden can only go up on existing property owners, he said.

For some political leaders, the prospect of higher property taxes looms larger than the hills of New Jersey's last rural enclave - the 800,000 acres stretching through sections of Bergen, Passaic, Morris, Hunterdon, and Warren counties, land that provides drinking water for half of the state's residents. The recently introduced Highlands preservation bill proposes identifying and buying huge watershed areas and funneling growth into non-sensitive areas.

To some municipal officials, the bill may go a long way toward identifying the need for environmental protection, but comes up way short in compensating municipalities for development potential they would likely lose.

"The bill isn't really clear on how municipalities would be compensated," said John Inglesino, a Morris County freeholder who is also a former Rockaway Township mayor. "It's hard to support."

So great is the concern that Morris County political leaders intend to meet Wednesday at the county Cultural Center in Morris Township to discuss the issue.

The 102-page Highlands bill does outline several models to compensate towns for lost development opportunities, most of them based upon the state's Green Acres program. But it is a bit fuzzy about where New Jersey would find the money to buy land from towns and private developers in the Highlands.

The state estimates that it would take at least $200 million to buy up all the land that needs to be preserved in the Highlands.

"There is great concern that these programs might languish in years to come," said Jack J. Schrier, a Morris County freeholder and member of the Highlands Task Force, which helped write the bill.

Schrier said there is a valid reason why local leaders might feel they could be shortchanged by Highlands preservation. There is fear that the bill, which would establish a regional planning authority in the Highlands, would create a "Big Brother" state government that would move in and take land.

Schrier, who has been an ardent supporter of regional planning, acknowledged that some of those fears are justified. The state also has in the past created preservation commissions and then withheld funding - leaving the agencies with little power.

"Remember the Lake Hopatcong Commission?" Schrier said Monday, referring to the agency created by Governor McGreevey a few years ago to save New Jersey's largest lake from overdevelopment. The commission had barely gotten its feet off the ground when it fell victim to the state's budget crunch.

Another concern is that the bill doesn't yet contain a map identifying the core areas for preservation in the Highlands. Although the state Department of Environmental Protection has promised to draw up the map in a couple of weeks, local leaders are hesitant to support any preservation effort until they know how it will impact them directly.

At the same time, McGreevey, a Democrat, is anxious to have the bill released from committee and brought to a full Senate vote April 22, which is Earth Day. Democrats control both houses of the Legislature, and the Highlands preservation effort has proceeded on a political fast track.

"The governor seems to be pushing this bill through a little too fast," said Inglesino, a Republican. "This is a big, complex bill."