As the new home of NJPIRG's environmental work, Environment New Jersey can be contacted regarding this testimony.
These proposed protections
continue a strong trend over the last year and half to reexamine the importance
of anti-degradation protections for our surface waters and to push for a broad
cultural change in the DEP to see increased protections as part of the mandate
of the Clean Water Act. NJPIRG fully supports these proposed protections because
they embody this sort of proactive regulatory approach. For too long, regulatory
inconsistencies allowed trout-production to be the sole litmus test on whether
increased protections should be proposed. Now, wisely drinking water and habitat
for endangered and threatened species can be thought as worthy criteria.
The waterways proposed not
only advance the importance of our drinking water source and the fact that our
waterways serve as crucial habitat, they also start to embrace the reality of
watersheds. They acknowledge that we get our drinking water from rivers and
streams, as well as reservoirs. They acknowledge that feeder streams and tributaries
cannot be excluded from increased protection. They acknowledge that water quality
affects the habitat and lives of crucial habitat.
Specifically, the extension
of protection for HUC 14s and HUC 11s around the Metedeconk River is a strong
embrace of this realization, as well as the extension of protections to the
tributaries of Lake Tappan and Woodcliff Lake, and a strong list of ecologically
critical waterways in Hunterdon and Warren Counties.
These proposed protections,
however, are part of a much larger and comprehensive project by the DEP to evaluate
the state's waterways and propose protections for critical areas of drinking
water supply and critical habitat. This March, the DEP released an extensive
list of over 4,000 miles of rivers and streams that it had identified as critical
in some environmental fashion, regarding its location to a drinking water intake,
its pristine water quality or its documentation as critical habitat. The waterways
spanned the state, from the northern reaches of the Highlands to the Sourlands
from the Delaware Bay Shore to the Shore. This initiative is part of this much
wider process, and should be seen as a continuation of these initial round of
upgrades.
Certainly, there has been
opposition to the Department's focus, especially from the development community.
The New Jersey Builders Association has worked to delay the first round of protections
for reservoirs and pristine streams that were finalized this April, and will
certainly oppose the new protections for Category One waterways that have been
proposed in the stormwater hearings with legal suit.
This opposition certainly
will create additional headaches and backlogs, but it is crucial that this March
mandate is still carried out with all deliberate speed. We need to see additional
rounds that target regions of the state, focusing on all regions of the Highlands
and the Delaware Bay Shore in particular. These additional protections need
to mirror some of the strengths of the earlier proposals—identifying critical
areas of drinking water and habitat, and mapping out the immediate areas of
the watershed that should be included in these broad regulatory protections.
They should fully incorporate the criteria that the DEP documented in its mapping
that was made publicly available in March, especially in working to protect
drinking water watersheds with less than 5 percent of impervious cover.
It should go without saying
that these new proposed protections will need full regulatory integration in
the pending rules for groundwater, water allocation, septic, freshwater wetlands
and stream encroachment. The proposed protections in the stormwater rule offer
a hard and fast protection—the 300 foot buffer—that these pending rules
would do well to mimic. In short, we need consistency in our protection to full
emphasize that designations are not mere artifacts of the Surface Water Quality
Standards. These regulatory changes need to enter the lingua franca of the Department's
permitting process to ensure that case managers are not unintentionally ignoring
the stronger regulatory standards.
There is also a continued
struggle at the Department to ambitiously work for new protections while not
having all the desirable water quality testing data. We need to ensure that
for rivers and streams that receive increased protection is followed suit by
ensuring water quality data will be established for a particular waterway. Water
quality testing data not only shows the need for protection, but also will serve
as the stopgap to map any decrease in water quality.
Again, we support these
proposed protection, urge the DEP not to extend the public comment process,
and work towards finalizing these protections. Thank you.
