Development - The Debate
The Highlands Act is sweeping legislation that restricted development in a huge swath of northern New Jersey. But state officials have never quantified exactly how much development was off the table — until now.
If the Highlands Act had never passed, some 47,600 new homes and 108 million square feet of commercial development could have been built in the seven-county region that provides water to more than half of the state’s population, according to a “build-out analysis” unveiled at yesterday’s Highlands Council meeting in Chester.
Under the act, however, if all 88 municipalities in the 1,250-square-mile Highlands region went along with the council’s development plan, up to 12,300 homes and 19.1 million square feet of nonresidential space could be built.
But that number of homes and offices will never be built, the council’s analysis concluded because there is not enough water and sewer capacity in the region to support it.
The master plan “is going to have a very large impact on the amount of development that is allowed in the region,” said John Weingart, chairman of the New Jersey Highlands Council. “At the same time, it does show the Highlands Act is not going to stop all development in the region.”
Some council members — who also saw the analysis for the first time yesterday — said the numbers might suggest the council needs to further tighten some policies.
“We shouldn’t be planning for more development than can be supported,” council member Tim Dillingham said.
“I think the build-out analysis has basically confirmed what many people have known for a long time,” said Julia Somers, executive director of the environmental group New Jersey Highlands Coalition. “We are already facing a water shortage … we’ve just not wanted to deal with it.”
Council Executive Director Eileen Swan stressed the analysis is “not a prediction,” but a tool to measure the affect the regional master plan — which the council has been drafting for more than three years — would have on the area.
It is likely, she added, development in the Highlands may never get near the numbers in the build-out analysis because so much of the land is in environmentally sensitive areas and not connected to existing sewers and water lines.
The Highlands are a series of forested ridges, farmlands and water bodies that stretch through Passaic, Bergen, Morris, Sussex, Warren, Somerset and Hunterdon counties. The region supplies drinking water to people living in areas extending from Bergen County through parts of Gloucester County.
For years, environmentalists and scientists argued steady development was threatening the water supply. In 2004, Gov. James E. McGreevey and the state Legislature aimed to safeguard the region once and for all through the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act. The act created the Highlands Council, which would draft the master plan that is due to be adopted next month.
Critics of the Highlands Act — many of whom see it as a thinly disguised land grab — remained skeptical.
Long Valley farmer David Shope, a fixture at most Highlands Council meetings, called the numbers “garbage.” The Highlands Act, he said “is a strangulation by regulation of anything possibly happening up here.”
Doug Fenichel, a spokesman for K. Hovnanian builders, declined to comment directly on the numbers yesterday because he had not seen them. But he did stress the state’s affordable-housing shortage.
“Whatever the plan they come up with, you have to come up with a way to address the need for housing in the state of New Jersey,” he said. “Building those homes is the answer to solving our economic needs.”
Paula Saha may be reached at psaha@starledger.com or (973) 539-7910.
