As the new home of NJPIRG's environmental work, Environment New Jersey can be contacted regarding this testimony.
Preservation campaigns—urban and rural—are often centered around specific areas and specific threats.
Industrial attempts to exploit Yosemite spurred the creation of the National
Parks system. Efforts in the 1960s to dam the Grand Canyon galvanized America's
support for areas of natural beauty. Robert Moses' penchant for pavement breathed
life into Greenwich Village community organizers defense of their neighborhood.
In New Jersey, the ill-fated
Tock Island Dam Project was an ugly albatross that took over eight years to
defeat in the 1970s, which envisioned the Delaware Water Gap as a hydroelectric
haven as opposed to the designated Wild and Scenic area it is now.
The first attempts to permanently
protect the Pinelands arose after a massive airport was proposed for the region,
mirroring the preservation efforts to ward off an airport on the site of the
Great Swamp Wildlife Refuge.
History teaches us concurrently
that natural areas are worth fighting for and that tremendous opposition will
be exerted to parcel out chunks for private gain.
New Jersey has no national
forests, and the Highlands are the closest thing New Jersey is going to get.
The threats to the Highlands are outlined exhaustively in multiple studies,
including the U.S. Forest Highlands Study, that documents the amount of area
lost annually—5,000 acres—as well as the time remaining until build-out
at current growth patterns—less than 20 years.
If the development threats
to the region are scattered, the ultimate solution must not be. Like all successful
attempts to protect wilderness areas, there must be a political will to protect
large swaths of land that is expansive and bold. Ecological protection hinges
on non-fragmented habitat. Recreational uses are dependent on uninterrupted
trails. And the quality of drinking water watersheds is dependent on pristine
tributaries, rivers and reservoirs.
The Highlands Task Force
needs to make strong recommendations to the governor that adopt this philosophy
of core protection. It is imperative that at least 350,000 additional acres
of land in the Highlands be preserved or protected, and that a substantial portion
is designated as core preservation area that is permanently protected.
This strong preservation
effort must be accompanied by a strong regional planning board that represents
both members of the public, local officials and state officials in crafting
strong guidelines that will prevent development and major infrastructure, including
roads and sewers, from occurring in core preservation areas. This board will
help craft development decisions for the region to ensure that the goals of
encouraging growth in centers and restricting it in more rural areas are followed
in protection areas.
These efforts should be
enacted in conjunction with strong regulatory protection from the state that
encourages strong protection of our drinking water sources, including holistic
protections for all tributaries that feed reservoirs and rivers above drinking
water intakes. Additionally, strong protections for groundwater sources, adequate
water allocation planning, and comprehensive protections for habitat for threatened
and endangered habitat are all part of the mix.
There should be a clear
mandate to the governor: the Highlands are under siege, and we need the strongest
possible protections to save them for our sake and our children's sake.
