Standing Room Only To Protect The Highlands At DEP Hearing On Water Quality Rollback

Governor Christie has the worst record on the environment ever

“The Highlands bill, if it had actually been implemented the way it was supposed to be, may not have the worst idea in the world — close,” he said. But “the way it was implemented, it was clearly one of the worst ideas” by state lawmakers.  ~~ Governor Christie –  Christie explains stance on Highlands Act in West Milford town hall meeting (10/16/12)

Ken Lockwoood Gorge – running low and warm on June 1, 2016

No time this morning, so just a quick note today on last night’s DEP hearing, which was packed. I’ll do a followup on the substance and next steps.

So glad that lots of people turned out in support of preserving the Highlands and clean water and forests and wildlife.

Tom Johnson at NJ Spotlight covered the hearing and got it right, see:

• AT PACKED HIGHLANDS HEARING, SUSPICION AND SKEPTICISM RUN DEEP

The audience at the packed hearing was overwhelmingly in opposition to the DEP rollback, about 20 – 1. Best line of the night: “I speak for the trout“.

The only people who testified in support of the rollback were the NJ Builders Association, landowners seeking speculative profits from development, and a Warren County Freeholder promoting economic development.

The landowner legal claims that their property was devalued and taken without just compensation were rejected by the NJ courts – so they are purely political and self interested arguments.

The Farm Bureau claim that their land’s development potential is collateral for farming operating loans and that the Highlands Act has hurt their ability to secure loans needed to farm the land are patently false.

Real farmers should be ashamed of the greed of their leadership and their willingness to destroy the environment and threaten public water supply in greedy pursuit of speculative development profits.

Ryck Suydam, president of the New Jersey Farm Bureau

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! ~~~ Isaiah, V, 8

The claims by all those opponents that the DEP rules are not based on science have been rejected by NJ courts and an Administrative Law Judge several times. They are simply false.

This is all about Gov. Christie’s promise to rollback the Highlands Act, a pledge he has been unable to deliver through the Legislature. So the Gov. is using DEP to deliver on that political commitment to landowners and developers.

That kind of abuse of power and destruction of DEP as an independent regulatory institution can not stand.

As I noted, the USGS study DEP relies exclusively on for this rollback was not a scientific investigation – it was a statistical analysis of flawed data.

USGS is one of the nation’s premier science institutions with a stellar reputation and a deep reluctance to be used for political purposes.  If the USGS does not withdraw the study under the federal Data Quality Act complaint we filed to preserve that reputation, surely the Legislature will veto this rule as “inconsistent with legislative intent”.

Richard Nieuwenhuis, former president of the New Jersey Farm Bureau began the attack back in 2008