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DEP tightens rules on water for developers
Impact on environment targeted
Posted by the Asbury
Park Press on 01/6/07
BY KIRK MOORE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Developers who want exemptions allowing them to build
within 300 feet of protected streams and rivers such as the Metedeconk and the Manasquan will have to submit
studies showing the impact of their projects on the environment.
Under an administrative order issued this week, state
Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson
directed that exemptions to the Category 1 stream buffer rules be
considered only after applicants submit a "functional value
assessment" to show that the ecological value of the buffer won't be
damaged by the planned clearing or construction.
Environmental activists last year criticized the DEP's application of Category 1 stream buffer rules —
particularly along creeks in Warren and Hunterdon counties, where they complained
former farm properties were being developed with homes too close to the
streams.
In a letter Thursday to Michael King of the League for
Real Smart Growth, a Hunterdon
County group, DEP
assistant Commissioner Mark N. Mauriello said the
functional value analysis will now be used in all permit decisions.
"I think it was a really positive step. They (DEP
officials) deserve credit for this," said Bill Wolfe of Public
Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who said it appears Jackson's order will stop
most development within the 300-foot wide buffer areas.
Stream buffers are essentially land that's left
undisturbed between new development and the stream edge, so that native
vegetation and soil help filter out sediment and pollution carried in storm
water runoff.
Other interest groups have been skeptical of the buffer
rule, seeing it as a maneuver to virtually take private land without
compensation. DEP officials and environmental groups say the 300-foot rule
is important for maintaining water quality in Category 1 streams, which
feed public reservoirs and the state's remaining trout waters.
In any event, no buffer exemptions will allow
development closer than 150 feet to a stream, according to a DEP
"guidance document" issued with Jackson's order.
The document also specifies that a farm property can be
considered "active agriculture" only when it's clear of all woody
vegetation. Critics contended that a buffer exemption originally designed
to let farmers keep streamside fields was being misused to allow new
construction in buffers.
"When the storm water rules were first approved,
farmers could keep farming" in those buffers, said Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club. "But when they went
over to development, they would come under the 300-foot rule."
That was later re-interpeted
by former DEP commissioner Bradley M. Campbell so that those old fields
were considered "disturbed" sites and usable for development, he
said.
"It doesn't really change anything for agriculture
because we're covered under the exemption," said Peter J. Furey of the New Jersey Farm Bureau. "There's some fine details we have to research in this,
but we don't think it will really affect us."
Stream protections were originally written to protect
trout brooks in the northern counties, but after the drought early in this
decade, more drinking water supplies were put under "C1"
protections. About 20 percent of the state's streams are now in the
category, and forthcoming regulations for others will include new
"riparian corridor" rules, Wolfe said.
Those rules will be nowhere near as stringent as C1
regulations, he said, but the DEP will attempt to limit vegetation
disturbance and paving close to streams: "It's going to improve the
status quo."
Kirk Moore:
(732) 557-5728
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