Regional Master Plan Issues: 1/4/07 draft
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1. The release of the RMP makes it clearer than ever that the Highlands Act is not about protecting water. Restricting growth and water use in the Highlands will do absolutely nothing to protect New Jersey’s water supply as long as growth continues at an unbridled pace everywhere except the Highlands and the Pinelands.

2. Scientific data for all components was supposed to be released as part of the Regional Master Plan and was not.

3. Analyses of the data was supposed to have been presented as part of the RMP to show how the data were used and how they were weighted in order to arrive at various conclusions and almost no data is contained in the plan. The Council has said they will release some technical data later on, but has no intention of ever releasing all of it.

4. There is no science backing up the stream buffer requirements either in the plan or in the bibliography. In fact, according to the sources listed in the bibliography, buffers as small as 30 feet are all that is necessary to stabilize a bank. Buffers of 100 feet may be useful for wildlife conservation purposes. None of the literature shows any need for 300 foot buffers for water conservation purposes, or for wildlife either. All of the literature is crystal clear on the fact that each stream is different and should be protected by a different size and type of buffer.

5. Almost all sections of the RMP carry the requirement that municipalities adopt ordinances to support them, but those ordinances have yet to be developed or disclosed. We know from meetings of the Highlands Council that they will be far reaching and include everything from zoning and resource standards to rules like the regulation of fireplace smoke and requirements for green construction which include where on the lot a building may go and what materials can be used in it’s construction. It will fall on the municipalities to enforce the ordinances, which will potentially be an overwhelming task.

6. The Transportation proposal for our already over capacity roads talks about opening up abandoned rail lines yet at the same time admits that the vast majority of people in the Highlands must travel by car. On top of that, they admit that a lot of the traffic is from Pennsylvania. The plan says that high density building will reduce the transportation problem – how can that possibly happen in area where neither the town nor the places the residents work are served by mass transportation? The transportation proposal also makes it mandatory for new construction to include what they call “inter parcel access”. This is a right of way between every parcel of land, theoretically to provide farmers with a way of getting their crops to market without using the road system. The other recommended transportation solution is the development of a trail system. Obviously, farmers can’t take trucks on dirt trails and residents can’t get to work on them either. The real goal is to establish “greenways” where city folks can walk anywhere they wish through private property. This battle to grab private property for trails is being waged throughout rural America. Trail right-of-ways cause enormous problems for the property owners adjacent to them, and such a plan has no business in a water protection plan.

7. The use of recycled water will be mandatory in new construction and in renovated homes, yet no water conservation measures are outlined for residents outside the Highlands who use the water. Why should only Highlands residents be forced to use recycled water for their toilets and gardens?

8. Protection zone residents must build on no more than ˝ acre in the interest of saving money on water and sewer lines. Why should only Highlands residents be forced to do this, particularly in an area where ˝ acre zoning is far more dense that most townships feel is appropriate.

9. Recreation and tourism are theoretically supported by the RMP yet there is prohibition on the development of resources to support is such as lodging and other infrastructure. Despite no analysis of either the demand for tourism or the acceptance of it by local residents, local ordinances promoting recreation and tourism are going to be required.

10. Historic and Scenic sites were supposed to be identified as dictated by the Highlands Act. While this is something that should be removed from the Highlands Act since it is too subjective and has nothing to do with water, for now, it is still there. The Highlands Council has not identified any new sites and is leaving this to the municipalities. Yet, they have outlined the very strict restrictions on such sites and said that each town should set up an historical preservation commission and ordinances to protect those resources.

11. Development of a Land Use Capability Map is part of the Regional Master Plan. However, when the planning process was initially scoped out, expensive consultants were hired to assist help prepare the map in various layers so that it would be possible to use software that allowed a person to click on an area and see all the attributes including streams, soils, forested area, wetlands, endangered species, etc. Not one of these attributes has been mapped at any level of detail beyond the Highlands Area in total. That makes it impossible for either property owners or municipalities to review the map for inaccuracies.

12. Municipalities will be required to map and maintain and inventory (subject to Highlands Council Approval) of Highlands Open Waters and Riparian Areas. This has already largely been done by the DEP as part of the storm water and wetlands rules. The Council was supposed to review the DEP data and add any that were missing, but apparently has not done so. It is confusing about who has ultimate authority regarding the designation of these features – the Highlands Council or the DEP? And how, and why, should towns develop inventories of these? The towns don’t even have the ability to develop site specific maps, and the DEP already has them.

13. The RMP was supposed to include a natural resource capacity analysis as dictated by the Highlands Act in order to determine how much and what kind of human development could be sustained. That requirement appears to have been ignored. It seems unlikely that the answer is that the Highlands can sustain high rise buildings in the town centers but can sustain almost no growth elsewhere. In addition, nothing except residential development has been addressed. Nor are there any figures for capacity of development of any kind.

14. The RMP was supposed to include the development of a Transfer of Development Rights program as dictated by the Highlands Act in order to provide a means to compensate property owners for lost equity. That requirement was ignored. So was the identification of specific areas totaling 3% of the planning area that could be receiving areas. That deadline was actually February of 2006.

15. Development of a program for Sustainable Agriculture was mandated by the Highlands Act. Other than to define this as largely the site specific practices needed to protect natural resources, the subject was ignored, and as a result, the viability of farming as a business in the Highlands is further threatened. Yet, agriculture will be subject to stricter rules, placing even more burden on farmers.

16. The Highlands Act mandated that the Highlands Council work with other state agencies such as the DEP and the Office of Smart Growth/COAH in the development of the RMP. Agreements with these agencies have not been made, and the RMP simply contains language that they will try to do so in the future. This leaves towns and property owners in the middle since the DEP regulations and the Smart Growth components of the RMP do not currently match existing state regulations, nor do the parties impacted have any formal way of resolving the differences outside of the judicial system.

17. The entire agricultural conservation zone as well as the priority for farms suitable for preservation are based on the type of soils, which is only one of many factors that makes a successful farm. Worse, they used 1 square mile as the minimum measure to put an area into the agricultural conservation zone. Since much farmland has grown back into forest in the Highlands, that leaves much farmland in the Protection Zone where restrictions are even more harsh.

18. The Highlands Act mandated that the RMP include a financial component, including a Cash Flow Timetable, to outline the costs of implementing the plan as well as the source of those funds. With the exception of municipal planning grants, this requirement was virtually ignored. The Council hired outside consultants to help with this, but the RMP does not mention the results of that endeavor.

19. The Highlands Act mandated that the RMP include the maximum possible input from local governments and citizens. While the RMP talks about the meetings they held, they fail to note that many, many concerns were raised at those meetings that have not been addressed as part of the RMP. The RMP also fails to note that groups such as the Technical Advisory Committees generally met only once, and in the end, little that was recommended was considered in the plan.

20. The Highlands Act mandated that the RMP include an identification of land where restrictions are so severe as to leave the owner with no viable use of the land so that these lands could be purchased by the state. This mandate was ignored, yet many, particularly those who own industrial property in the preservation zone have no possible uses left for their land, and therefore the value of that land has gone down to zero.

21. The Highlands Act prohibited any development within 300 feet of Highlands Open Waters, but the RMP increases that to 1000 feet in the case of vernal (seasonal) pools which removes about 72 acres of property from use. It is unclear when or if the Highlands Council supercedes the DEP in this regulation.

22. The Highlands Act mandated that the RMP establish septic densities. The RMP states that the Highlands Council has not yet completed its nitrate study which will dictate septic densities. Yet, the DEP has standards in effect throughout the state, including the Highlands preservation zone which can have 1 septic per 88 acres of wooded land or 1 per 25 acres of open land. Is the Council nervous about towns opting in to their plan if they knew that the septic densities in the RMP were going to be the same as the DEP rules? The Council has the same information on soils, streams, slopes and nitrates as the DEP, yet will not come out with septic densities, which are nothing more than plugging numbers into the same formula that the DEP uses.

23. The Highlands Act mandated that the RMP include provisions to “advance the quality of life of the residents of the region”. The only time that quality of life is addressed from a planning perspective is in the smart growth sections where the goal is to enhance the quality of life for people who do not live in the Highlands yet. Quality of life or economic stability of the current residents of the Highlands is ignored.

24. Stewardship of the Highlands resources continues to be ignored in the RMP as it was in the Highlands Act itself.