What's New
Gov. Corzine cannot afford to ignore the rampant pace of
over-development across the state. Environment New Jersey is advocating that Gov.
Corzine urge the Department of Environmental Protection to revise and
officially propose the much-delayed protections for critical habitat
lands across the state. The rules have received tremendous opposition
from developers who don’t want to see any hurdles to building across
the state. Environment New Jersey is also urging Gov. Corzine to replenish rapidly
dwindling Green Acres open space funding which is predicted to run out
of money in late 2007.
How You Can Help
Ask the Governor to
adopt the ‘critical habitat rules’ which would protect New Jersey’s most
ecologically rich open spaces from development.
Brief Summary
To the tune of 50 acres a day, New Jersey
is losing the green places in our towns that provide wildlife habitat, stop
run-off pollution from flowing into our waterways and put the Garden in Garden State.
Rutgers University predicts that the state will
reach full “build-out”—the day we’ll run out of land—in 30 years. One of
the state’s biggest developers—Bob Toll of Toll Brothers—thinks that
it will occur even faster—in the next 15 years.
What's the result of that
freedom? The developers build without a regard to what places should and shouldn't
be developed, and at unsustainable rates. As a result, New Jersey has lost a lot of
its natural beauty and far too much of its open space. Today, 40 percent of
the state's land area is developed, making New Jersey the most densely developed state
in the nation and even more densely populated than India and Japan!
Every year, developers and
builders destroy another 18,000 acres of open space—that's a land area two times
the size of Jersey City, one of the state's largest cities. At that rate, according
to Rutgers University, in 40 years the entire state will be as developed as
Hudson County.
Outdoor recreation and green
spaces are a critical part of life in New Jersey, but we are at risk of losing
that because of developers.
