NJDEP regulations aimed at preventing flooding

By MEGGAN CLARK Health/Science Writer (609) 272-7209

Published: Thursday, December 7, 2006

Press of Atlantic City

The new regulations come on the heels of several major floods along the Delaware River that environmentalists say were a warning of the perils of overdevelopment.

"We're flooding more now in places that we've never flooded before," said Dena Mottola, executive director of Environment New Jersey. "If we want to prevent that problem from expanding, then we need to section off sensitive watershed land that's needed around waterways."

Development can exacerbate flooding because impermeable surfaces, such as flat roofs and parking lots, don't absorb rainwater that would normally sink into the ground. The water then rushes off into streams and rivers, which can become swollen and threaten buildings close to their banks.

Also, Mottola said, growing demand for water has prompted officials in northern New Jersey to keep reservoirs at higher levels than in the past, making them more likely to overflow.

But the rules have garnered the opposition of builders, who said they will snarl already-planned developments and have a chilling effect on the state economy. Also, the New Jersey Builders Association, or NJBA, said, the new regulations do nothing to address the state's existing flooding problem.

The proposed regulations would increase the required buffer between a river or stream and development from a minimum of 25 feet to 50 feet and require a 150-foot buffer in environmentally sensitive areas. Buffers of 300 feet would be required along the state's most sensitive waterways.

The regulations are "among the nation's strongest for providing stream-corridor protections and for imposing limitations on development in a flood plain," according to the Department of Environmental Protection.

NJBA agrees that the state has a flooding problem, but contends that the proposed regulations are difficult to understand, ineffective in remedying current problems and do not fairly "grandfather" projects currently in the planning stages.

"It has a chilling effect for the state as a whole, going forward, because it signifies to investors that they cannot, in good faith, rely on the existing laws and policies of New Jersey ... in making their business decisions," NJBA Chief Executive Officer Patrick O'Keefe said.

O'Keefe also complains that the proposed regulations are "comprehensively incomprehensible" and "raise ambiguity to an art form."

"It took the department 800 pages to both present the proposal and explain it," he says. "You'd think that with that volume of verbiage, the department could have made it clear how the rule applied, to what it applied and how the people affected by it could comply ... (and) there is nothing in the rule that addresses the current flooding conditions."

O'Keefe said NJBA does not plan legal action.

The DEP will be accepting comments through Dec. 31. After that, the DEP will review the comments, make any changes to the regulations deemed necessary and probably put them on the books next spring, DEP spokeswoman Karen Hershey said.

Comments may be sent to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Gary Bower, Esq., Att. DEP 16-06-08/70, Office of Legal Affairs, PO Box 402, Trenton, NJ 08625.