TRENTON – New Jersey’s aggressive efforts to combat the “unavoidable impacts of climate change” have resulted in an attempt to implement sweeping changes to the state’s land use regulations.
Resilient Environments and Landscapes (REAL) is a part of an overall state regulatory initiative known as New Jersey Protecting Against Climate Threats (NJPACT).
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) has released a series of proposed rule changes that have many in the state, and especially in the coastal zones, up in arms. The proposals would greatly expand the inundation risk zone, redefine both the tidal flood hazard area and the fluvial flood hazard area, impact permit processing, stormwater management and maintenance of coastal facilities and infrastructure.
Public reaction has been mixed, with many individuals, groups, and municipalities downright hostile. Most of the opposition, in the form of writing comment to the NJDEP proposed rules, acknowledges the “very real challenges” of environmental change but criticizes sharply what those in opposition see as the NJDEP’s heavy-handed, top-down approach that ignores the long tradition of home rule in the state, runs the danger of unnecessary damage to property values, and fails completely to take into account the real social and economic factors that must be addressed as part of any response to environmental challenges.
While much of the focus has been on the land use regulation changes, another part of NJPACT has come under increasing resistance in Cape May County, that being the clean energy provisions that are pushing forward wind farm development off the coast with associated issue of how transmission infrastructure is managed.
The methods and routes used for transmitting electricity from the wind farms to the onshore electrical grid are causing controversy in Ocean City, where there is strong opposition to have submerged, high-voltage transmission cables come through the resort’s beaches and traverse Green Acres designated land.
With respect to most of the land use regulation changes, opposition has come from business groups like the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce, organizations representing interests ranging from labor unions to commercial real estate development advocates, and municipalities. In one comment, the Deputy Mayor of Morris River Township found “the talk of raising homes by 5 feet or more as if it were magic, was very discouraging.”
This remark hits at a central theme in the criticism of the NJDEP effort. It does not, in the view of many who say they accept the need for some form of action, incorporate social and economic factors into the discussion. That was a premise in the written comments by the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce. The financial burdens associated with the regulatory proposals are every bit as real as the fact that environmental change is occurring.
In comments by NAIOP, a commercial real estate development association, the NJDEP’s decision “to use 2100 as a planning horizon, and a sea level value that has a confidence level of 17%, seems unreasonable.”
The Engineers Labor-Employer Cooperative 825 accuses the state of using “data on sea level rise and rainfall for extreme policy decisions that are not warranted from the data.”
Locally, one form of municipal rebellion has been criticism of an NJDEP model ordinance. Several municipalities, as well as the Cape May County League of Municipalities, passed resolutions of opposition to the ordinance and the coastal regulations linked to it. The resolutions are critical of several aspects of the regulations, including the need to raise new and substantially improved homes 5 feet above base flood elevation, a move that is seen as “prohibitively expensive” and potentially “not even feasible” on many lot sites.
The resolutions of opposition argue against the long-planning horizon to 2100 for municipalities that have 20- or 30-year horizons maximum in their Master Plans. It makes the same case against the NJDEP’s lack of consideration of the “magnitude of the economic impact of these proposed regulations.”
Among the criticisms is also the challenge to regulatory reform of this magnitude that relies predominately on the authorities in executive orders, cutting the legislative branch out of the state’s response to environmental change.
This opposition goes well beyond the rejection of the NJDEP’s proposed local flood damage protection ordinance. It puts the municipalities that pass the resolution on record as opposing “the adoption of the PACT Regulations.”
There have been groups supportive of the state’s approach. While they offer different refinements to the proposed regulatory changes, they are New Jersey Future, The Pew Charitable Trust, and the New Jersey Nature Conservatory.
As the public awaits the state’s reaction to the feedback it has received, it might be worth noting a section from the NAIOP letter of comment, which acknowledged that “climate change threats are existential; meaningful and effective solutions will require a degree of public support and buy-in not easily achieved through the mere promulgation of regulations.”
Those who have opposed the current proposed state regulations also carry the obligation to help find a way to meet what almost all written comments acknowledge are the pressing problems of environmental change.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.
