NJ’s Trout Streams Threatened – Christie DEP Rolling Back Protections

Governor Breaks Promise to Expand Designations of “Category One” (C1) Waters

Fishermen should remember in November

Ken Lockwood Gorge - one of NJ's finest trout spots

The Hunterdon County Democrat ran an interesting story today on NJ’s native brook trout:  New Jersey Wildlife: Brook trout, the state’s fish

The story highlights the top threats to trout:

the top six stressors to brook trout populations in the state are (in order of significance): increased water temperatures, dam impediments, agriculture runoff, urbanization, one or more exotic fish species interaction (including introduction of other non-native trout species) and degraded riparian habitat.”

The three most significant of these stressors – increasing water temperature, urbanization and degraded riparian habitat – are directly related to poor land use planning, lax regulation, and over-development.

The DEP has effective planning and regulatory tools to protect trout streams and preserve riparian habitat.

The most significant threat to the effective use of these tools to protect trout streams are the policies of Governor Christie and his incompetent DEP Commissioner, Bob Martin.

Let me give just one of many clear examples of why this is true.

One of the DEP’s most powerful regulatory tools is designation as a “Category One” (C1) water,

A C1 designation by DEP provides 300 foot wide protected vegetated buffers on both sides of the stream. Vegetated buffers filter pollutants, provide wildlife habitat, and cooling shade. This helps keep native trout streams flowing cool and clean.

During the 2009 campaign, Gov. Christie promised to expand this DEP C1 program, but, after almost 4 years, his DEP has failed to designate a single C1 stream. Not one.

At the same time that DEP is failing to honor the Gov. commitment, the DEP is weakening other water resource protections and promoting economic development and poor land use that its killing the streams.

Fishermen should remember in November.