The state Department of Environmental Protection says that it expects to adopt the new Resilient Environments and Landscapes regulations, all 1,000-plus pages of them, sometime in early January.

REAL is a set of coastal zone rules driven by Murphy’s executive orders that seek to address what the state calls “climate reality.” They are intended to increase resiliency and in so doing save lives and protect property as climate change produces sea level rise and increases the frequency and severity of flooding.

Asserting that a consensus exists on the threat imposed by climate change and that it is a “well-settled” fact in the scientific community that climate change is anthropogenic, the state has pursued land use regulation changes with the zeal of the true believer, strongly supported by environmental and climate change advocacy groups.

What do the new regulations do? They establish rules for coastal zone development based on stated expectations for sea level rise by the year 2100. The rules result in expanded flood inundation zones, added elevation heights for construction, increased attention to stormwater management and an encouraged use of nature-based solutions as part of the response to rising seas.

The New Jersey Protection Against Climate Threats program, or NJPACT, began with Murphy’s Executive Order 100 in January 2020. Rules for the coastal zone were published in the New Jersey Register on Aug. 5, 2024.

A year of controversy ensued, with environmental groups disappointed at the delay in adoption of the rules and with criticisms and outright resistance from coastal communities and business organizations. At the extremes, the state was seen as either protecting lives and property from clear and present dangers or, in the eyes of others, trying to force a retreat from the Shore. In July the state bowed slightly to the opposition.

Substantial changes were initiated, extending yet another period of public comment that ended on Sept. 19. The rules were modified, with 1 foot removed from the first-floor elevation height, a small reduction in the proposed inundation zones, a hardship exception for affordable housing and five-year review periods when the DEP says it will revisit the rules in light of then-current science.

Sounds almost reasonable until you consider the potential damage the new regulations can have on development and taxpayer burdens in the coastal zone. Those dangers to economic, environmental and development conditions require that we ask certain reasonable questions – not as climate change denyers, but as citizens concerned about the risk-reward ratio involved in drastic changes to land use regulations.

One of those questions has to be why it makes sense to significantly change land use laws just as the state is guaranteed to get a new chief executive within weeks after the proposed adoption date of the rules. These changes are not coming from legislation but rather from executive fiat.

The DEP projects the sense that its late July changes address concerns with the original set of regulations. Yet the reference date for sea level rise remains three-quarters of a century in the future. The economic burden of moving to significantly higher elevations is real now, not at some date in the future.

Without strong public support, top-down decrees will waste taxpayer funds and ultimately fail.

The way to achieve success in the struggle with climate change is through strong public support. Without it, top-down decrees will waste taxpayer funds and ultimately fail. It is hard to argue that the state, through the governor or his agencies, has paid attention to building that support.

The public’s experience with this administration’s climate initiatives offers little reassurance. We saw an expensive, largely failed attempt to develop an offshore wind initiative that was promised to lead the nation in renewable energy. We see soaring electricity bills following the premature closing of fossil fuel plants, leaving the state with a greater energy supply deficit.

Now we face the near-term adoption of new regulations that will disrupt life in the coastal zone and make it more expensive, all in the service of what the DEP asserts is the “best science available.”

To adopt sweeping new rules now, aimed at an end point decades in the future, looks more like an effort to bolster Murphy’s legacy than to craft good policy.

Quotes From the Bible

“For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost?”  —  Luke 14:28