GARDEN STATE ENVIRONEWS 000821B
Phil Reynolds
GARDEN STATE ENVIRONEWS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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** Section B - Part 2 of 3 **
000821A
<*> HOME RULE USURPED BY BY ASSEMBLY BILL #2332
<*> MONTVALE: TOYS`R'US MAY DESTROY 9 ACRES OF WOODLAND
<*> QUESTIONS RAISED ABOUT CRANBERRY GROWER'S DEAL WITH STATE
<*> FEDS OPPOSE DEMARCO WETLANDS SETTLEMENT
<*> CHEMICAL EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND PREVENTION
000821B
<*> REPRESENTATIVE JIM SAXTON NAMED "ENVIRONMENTAL CHAMPION"
<*> GAMBLING WITH DAMS
<*> THE PAVING OF NEW JERSEY
000821C
<*> MARCH TO UNITE COAST AGAINST OCEAN DUMPING
<*> MOBILIZING THE REGION #282
<*> BROWNFIELDS REDEVELOPMENT: A NJ OPPORTUNITY - OCT 4
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REPRESENTATIVE JIM SAXTON NAMED "ENVIRONMENTAL CHAMPION"
Date: 18 Aug 2000
From: LCV-Update {owner-lc...@lists.client-mail.com}
League of Conservation Voters announces independent campaign to help
re-elect Saxton based on his environmental leadership
Washington - Citing the environment as a decisive issue in the 3rd
district congressional race, the nonprofit League of Conservation
Voters (LCV) today named U.S. Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ) an
"Environmental Champion" and kicked-off an independent campaign to
help re-elect the eight term Congressman. The Environmental Champions
campaign will inform New Jersey voters of Saxton's record of
environmental commitment and leadership.
To find out more information, please visit the LCV Media Center
(http://lcv.org/news/releases.htm)
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GAMBLING WITH DAMS
Date: 000817
From: http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/
By Wayne Woolley and Brian T. Murray, Staff Writers
Star-Ledger, 08/17/00
High in the hills of Morris County's Jefferson Township sits New
Jersey No Name Dam No. 51, a 26-foot embankment the state classifies
as a "high hazard," meaning that if it failed, someone could be killed
in the ensuing flash flood.
Throughout the weekend's punishing rains, nervous officials kept a
watchful eye on the dam, which reins in a 14-acre lake without an
official name.
The vigil was a tense one, full of uncertainty. Officials had little
way of knowing whether that dam and others would hold. Despite a state
law requiring that New Jersey's dams be inspected every two years, No
Name Dam No. 51 -- one of eight high-hazard dams at ground zero of the
freak storm -- hadn't been inspected since Sept. 12, 1980, according
to state records.
In the end, Dam 51 survived the storm, though it did suffer
"significant erosion," according to the state inspection report made
Monday.
Three smaller dams gave way under the torrent. Seneca Lake dam in
Sparta, Tomahawk Lake dam in Byram and the Edison Pond levee in Sparta
all crumbled beneath the massive force generated by nearly a foot of
rain Saturday and continued downpours in the days that followed.
Though the three smaller barriers are not classified as high hazard,
their failure sends a warning signal about the potential for disaster
among the state's dams.
A review of state inspection records filed with the federal
government shows that none of the eight high-hazard dams pounded by
the storm in Morris and Sussex counties have been inspected by their
owners since the late 1980s or early 1990s.
State officials contend they are monitoring the safety of the state's
high-hazard dams.
However, the state has been slow in ensuring that crumbling dams are
repaired.
Across the state, 67 high-hazard dams, including Dam 51, have been
identified as needing repair or improvements, according to John Moyle,
the chief of bridge safety for the Department of Environmental
Protection.
Officials with the DEP, which oversees 1,592 dams across the state,
concede that inspections haven't been conducted as regularly as the
law requires. The least attention is paid to the 1,400 lower- risk
dams. "We don't keep such a close eye on them," DEP spokesman Peter
Page said yesterday.
"It's a triage they (in the DEP's dam division) practice in enforcing
the rules," Page said. "The priorities are the dams that, if they
collapsed, would kill people."
The owners of the dams are responsible for fixing them. When it comes
to making sure the dams get repaired, "it's much more of an honor
system," Page said.
Two veteran state lawmakers who represent flood-ravaged towns said
they hope the weekend disaster will prompt Gov. Christie Whitman to
speed up efforts to repair aging dams throughout the state.
"It's a serious problem, and we need to get the high-hazard dams done
as soon as possible," said Sen. Robert Littell (R-Sussex), chairman of
the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee.
Littell and Sen. Anthony Bucco (R-Morris) sponsored a bill that would
have appropriated $50 million over three years for dam repairs. It
included $36 million for repairs, ranging from $200,000 to $1 million,
on high-hazard dams, and $14 million to repair dams damaged by
Hurricane Floyd.
While she approved the bill, the Governor reduced the general repair
fund to $6 million while slashing funds for Floyd-ravaged dams to $3.5
million. In June, when she signed the current state budget, Whitman
agreed to a legislative request for an additional $10 million from a
Hurricane Floyd relief fund for dam projects.
Bucco said he wished Whitman had approved the entire $50 million.
"We wanted to go after the high-hazard dams immediately and get them
done," he said. "Nobody seems to want to fix the problem."
Whitman spokeswoman Jayne O'Connor said the Governor fully recognized
the urgency of the problem when she enacted the dam repair bill in
January but thought $50 million was too much to appropriate at one
time and wanted state environmental officials to draw up a better plan
to target the most critical dams. That study should be done in time to
make recommendations for next year's budget, O'Connor said.
"There's a significant amount of money this year for dam repairs. The
Governor has recognized that there is a need to provide further money
in future years for this purpose, and that will be looked at," she
said.
The task of ensuring that dams are inspected every other year and
that necessary repairs are made is a daunting one that falls to just
nine inspectors.
"The reality is, there are about 1,600 dams, with about 800 of them
privately owned and many of the others owned by towns that cannot
afford to spend a million dollars to instantly upgrade them," Page
said. "So you try to be as patient or accommodating as possible
without jeopardizing the public's safety."
One dam that raised concerns during the storm was the 237-foot-wide
barrier on Lake Musconetcong. State records indicate the dam hasn't
been inspected since 1991, though some repairs were made two years
later.
Had the dam failed during Saturday's storms, it would have swept away
a large swath of Route 183 in Netcong and sent a wave of water and
life-threatening debris into the already swollen Musconetcong River,
which flows through residential neighborhoods in Netcong and Stanhope.
"We were fortunate that dam did well, although the flow was extremely
high. It needs to be upgraded," Moyle said. "Water could pour over the
top of the street as well as underneath and undermine the security of
the entire structure."
In most cases, the inspections are not personally conducted by state
inspectors.
"It is up to the owners of the dams to hire engineers and submit
reports to our office showing that the dams meet state standards,"
Moyle said.
The engineers in Moyle's office launch their own inspections when
owners fail to file timely reports on dams known to be substandard.
But the workload is heavy, with many dams to review and the task of
holding owners accountable often leading to lengthy legal battles.
The dam safety division is empowered to use the state Attorney
General's Office to sue those who don't comply with their orders to
maintain or inspect their dams.
But it's sometimes an uphill battle. The state has been trying to get
the courts to force the owners of a high-hazard dam on a Gloucester
County lake to make repairs for several months.
Last week, a judge gave the state permission to drain Wrights Mill
Pond in Elk Township because the owner hadn't repaired the dam to the
state's satisfaction.
This week, the courts ordered the state to stop draining the lake
while the owner's appeal is heard.
But it is rare that cases even get to court.
In most instances, inspectors have been stretched too thin to
identify all of the dams that pose a potential problem and are need of
repair, according to Page.
The damage caused by the rains this past weekend only added to the
workload dumped on the staff following Hurricane Floyd, and the Dam
Safety Division has been forced to prioritize and focus concentration
on high-hazard structures.
"We're going to look at all the dams affected by these events, but
manpower requires we concentrate our greatest effort on the dams that
pose the greatest threat," Moyle said.
It means that many of the smaller dams that failed in the storm were
largely ignored by the state and their owners.
* * *
Staff writers Mark Mueller and Joe Donohue contributed to this report.
(C) 2000 The Star-Ledger
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THE PAVING OF NEW JERSEY
Date: 000820
From: http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/
By Dunstan McNichol, Staff Writer, Star-Ledger, 08/20/00
With an ocean and a bay on one side and a river on the other,
Colonial New Jersey had more than a million acres of wetlands --
swamps, marshes and forests that absorbed rain.
But as the state became the most densely populated in the nation, the
wetlands and trees began disappearing, although for a long time no one
much minded.
For the past two decades, however, environmentalists have been
warning that unchecked elimination of wetlands could mean disaster,
especially during heavy, steady rain.
Now a new state study shows that despite legislation to slow their
destruction, wetlands continue to disappear. From 1985 to 1995, more
than 13,000 acres of wetlands vanished under development.
Environmentalists say the flooding that occurred in northern New
Jersey last weekend and last year during Hurricane Floyd is proof of
the problems wetlands destruction causes. Not so, say some state and
local officials.
The disappearance of wetlands is not debatable, however, thanks to a
state study that compares aerial photos of the state taken a decade
apart.
How the destruction of wetlands continued despite a supposedly tough
law to halt the process is a story that involves bureaucratic buck-
passing between the state and federal government, legislative favors
granted to developers caught in the switches and a state agency that
cut staff as requests for building permits increased.
Wetlands serve as nature's sponges and filters, encompassing far more
than the swampy, reedy expanses of the Meadowlands and other typical
marshes. They are defined as any land that is regularly saturated with
water or contains vegetation unique to marshy areas.
In New Jersey, most surviving wetlands are forested. Other areas
classified as functioning as wetlands include stream banks and even
tiny patches of damp soil.
They serve the vital functions of absorbing storm water and purifying
rainwater before it reaches sources of drinking water.
In the Wallkill Watershed alone, the Northwest New Jersey area where
most of last weekend's flooding occurred, 236 acres of wetlands
disappeared beneath new houses and other developments, the new DEP
study shows.
The DEP conducted the study by making an acre-by-acre comparison of
computer-enhanced photographs of the state taken in 1995 with similar
photos taken 10 years earlier.
Since 1995, state records show, the pace of home construction across
Sussex, Warren and Morris counties has picked up as the population
boomed.
"You're talking about destroyed wetlands in the last 15 years that
would have retained trillions of gallons of water," said Jeff Tittel,
director of the Sierra Club of New Jersey. "It would have major
impacts on flooding."
But David Troast, director of planning for Sparta, said he doubts the
construction of 1,513 houses in his Sussex County community over the
past 15 years had any bearing on last week's destructive floods.
He said the freak storm was an isolated deluge that poured about a
foot of rain onto a small, largely undeveloped portion of his
township.
"Whether there were new homes in the area or not, you would have had
the same deluge," he said. "That analysis really doesn't apply."
According to maps the DEP prepared from the information recorded in
the new photographs, builders paved over 206 acres in Sparta between
1985 and 1995. That is an increase of 21 percent in the amount of land
that won't absorb water in Sparta.
In nearby Vernon Township, where almost 2,000 houses were built, the
amount of covered land rose by 15 percent -- from 1,326 acres to 1,527
acres. And in Byram Township, another Sussex County community hit hard
by last week's flooding, about 47 acres disappeared under buildings,
sidewalks, driveways and parking lots in the 10-year period, the study
shows.
The change in landscape cuts the ground's ability to absorb storm
water and increases the likelihood that sudden storms will generate
concentrated, flash-flood surges of water.
Timothy P. O'Reilly, mayor of Hillsdale, says he is convinced that is
just what happened along the Pascack Brook last year, when downpours
from Hurricane Floyd caused the brook to flood and destroy 15 houses
in his Bergen County community.
He believes overdevelopment in wetlands along the Pascack Brook cut
the area's ability to absorb heavy rains, and worsened the effects of
the storm.
"We've been begging them to stop all this construction, but the DEP's
handing out all these permits," he said. "The door's open there."
More than a decade ago, concerns about the danger of flooding from
the rapid loss of wetlands led Gov. Tom Kean to shut down the
construction industry in a bid to force lawmakers to adopt tough
building restrictions.
Kean's gambit worked, and the Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act of
1988 went into effect, billed as the toughest wetlands protection
measure in the nation.
It made New Jersey the second state to wrest control of its wetlands
from the federal Army Corps of Engineers, which had been in charge of
issuing permits to developers to fill in the environmentally sensitive
areas.
But the new maps show the law was ineffective during its first years.
State DEP officials say most of the wetlands destruction occurred
when the federal government was still in charge, and when liberal
extensions granted by the state Legislature limited the Wetlands Act's
effectiveness.
"Given all the extensions and the grandfathering, you were seeing
about 1,000 acres of filling each year," said Raymond E. Cantor, DEP's
assistant commissioner for Land Use Management. "Now we have the
program and the extensions are expiring, and it's down to 150 acres
per year. That's a success story."
But Kean called the new study's findings "shocking."
"The reason for the whole effort for that bill was to stop the
losses," he said. "It was absolutely vital and one of the things I'm
most proud of, so the fact there are continued losses is appalling."
To date the DEP has analyzed two-thirds of the state's 4.8 million
acres. Analysis of the remaining land is to be completed by November.
So far, the study shows that during the 10-year period, more than
100,000 acres of open land disappeared under houses and other
developments in the north and central parts of the state. The land
consumed by development included almost 70,000 acres of farmland,
about 29,000 acres of woodlands and 13,764 acres of wetlands.
"I predict when you see the 2000 data you'll see there's a reduction
(in losses)," said Cantor. "There's nothing big that's going on out
there."
Builders agree that the state law has clamped down on their ability
to develop wetlands, and say it is a prime reason housing production
has dropped from 57,000 units in 1986 to just under 32,000 last year.
"DEP's responsibility is natural resources protection; our
responsibility is shelters for families," said Patrick O'Keefe,
executive director of the New Jersey Builders Association. "Obviously
DEP is winning."
The pace of the wetlands losses -- about 2.6 percent over the decade
studied -- matches the rate at which wetlands have disappeared since
New Jersey was settled in Colonial times.
According to federal statistics, more than 585,000 acres of marshes
were drained for farms or paved over for urban development in New
Jersey between 1780 and 1980. By 1980, the state had about 900,000
acres of wetlands remaining.
That wetlands continued to disappear in the '80s and '90s, says
former Assemblywoman Maureen Ogden, (R-Essex), sponsor of the Wetlands
Protection Act, is troubling.
"We certainly thought when the law was passed that the loss of
wetlands was going to decrease tremendously," she said. "I guess maybe
the good news is this decade is behind us."
Builders, like Ringwood contractor Patrick Wallace, say the
protection act has preserved sensitive lands, as was intended.
Standing beside a patch of wetlands about the circumference of a
bushel basket, which he had to avoid in constructing 37 luxury houses
on a wooded mountain, Wallace said the law should be loosened.
"This little thing, I just don't see the value of it," he said.
The new evidence of wetlands destruction comes just as state
officials have unveiled a proposal to update the 1988 wetlands
protection act.
The DEP earlier this month proposed amendments to close loopholes
that have allowed developers to build homes on wetlands that had been
drained specifically for farming. But the proposed changes would make
it easier to develop polluted, urban wetlands and wetlands areas that
have already been altered by landscaping or loose paving.
Critics say the study shows the state has been lax in enforcing the
current law.
Greg ReMaud, conservation director of the New Jersey/New York
Baykeeper, says he has watched a large housing project decimate
wetlands adjacent to Cheesequake State Park in Sayreville just this
month.
Earthmovers from LaMer, a 1,200-unit residential complex going up on
bluffs just north of the park, tore down a line of trees and pushed
tons of soil down an embankment into wetlands below.
ReMaud said he is discouraged that a DEP inspector who responded to
his complaints accepted the developer's explanation that the soil
filling the wetlands was just the result of natural erosion. That, he
said, reflects the department's pattern of accommodating developers
over environmental protection.
"It's: 'Get those permits out and don't get in the way,'" he said.
"They run this as a business, and the clients are developers, not the
environment."
According to Tittel, another reason wetlands disappeared is that the
DEP was pinched in the '90s by a simultaneous reduction in staff and
an imposition of time limits for handling permits.
Since 1992, the staff assigned to review wetlands permit applications
has declined from 65 employees to 47, DEP records show. At the same
time, the volume of permits approved has climbed from 1,078 to 1,303
per year.
Since 1994, the DEP has approved 7,653 wetlands permit applications
and denied 221, state records show.
"What I am seeing from my experience with permitting is they are
going out of their way to push permits out without looking," Tittel
said.
Joseph Maraziti, chairman of the State Planning Commission, says the
new DEP study shows that the regulations may not be as restrictive as
the state or the builders portray them to be.
"This illustrates that no law is perfectly implementable in the field
or in the forests," he said "It's on paper, but it doesn't always
translate into reality."
* * *
Dunstan McNichol covers state government. He may be reached at
dmcn...@starledger.com or (609) 989-0341.
(C) 2000 The Star-Ledger
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