DEP Weakens Protections of Stream Buffers
DEP Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson has revoked her own order issued little more than a year ago protecting so called “Category 1″ stream buffers.
The effect of this sudden reversal makes it easier to cut stream buffers in half – from 300 feet to 150 feet – allowing development in the area surrounding the most sensitive streams, lakes and rivers, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).(Click on link for links to all the DEP documents).
On January 24, 2008, Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner (DEP) Lisa Jackson rescinded an Administrative Order that she issued on January 2, 2007.
The 2007 Order mandated that developers conduct a strict scientific demonstration to prove that any disturbance or reduction in the buffer widths along Category One streams resulted in equivalent protection before any construction would be allowed:
“[T]he Department shall not approve any encroachment [into a buffer] unless the applicant has demonstrated…that the functional value of the [buffer] will be maintained”.
Her 2007 Order was praised by environmentalists but loathed by developers.
This is what a natural buffer looks like after developers turn it into a stormwater management facility at a housing development.The strong 2007 Order was replaced by a weak guidance document. The new 2008 guidance document guts the scientific demonstration required under the 2007 Order and means that the current 300 foot buffer can be reduced to 150 feet without a rigorous prior showing that the important natural values will be protected.
This is a stormwater outfall in a stream buffer and direct discharge into a stream. 
Forested mountainside destroyed for building lots. Development on forested steep slopes causes massive erosion, sedimentation of streams and wetlands, downstream flooding,and destruction of prime habitat.
Engineering solutions don’t work.This is what happens when forests are cut down for development. Forests provide natural recharge and preserve and protect clean water supplies. Development destroys those critically important functions.
We are paving mountain forests and jeopardizing our water supply for McMansions and greedy developers.
Development road to nowhere.
This type of subterfuge where major policy are undermined in a barrage of tortured technical jargon hidden in rules and guidance documents is a specialty of the DEP. This is just the latest example. The same has been done with the hazardous waste cleanup program where as a matter of policy DEP is supposed to protect things like public health and ground water. But after wading through the morass of rules and guidance a nimble consultant can have a school or a condo built on a hazardous waste with little or no cleanup. There is a whole industry of winking and nodding “consultants” and lobbiests with offices on State street that make a very good living making sure that DEP rules and guidance appear on way on the surface but can me morphed into anything they like when their being paid to do the morphing. Your pictorial is a poignant demonstration of how real the consequences of a seemingly obscure guidance document can be. Its really time for a majore effort by environmental and public interest groups to expose and correct this type of abuse of the public trust.
You are exactly right swamp2. – and you said it a lot better than I did.
I’m really frustrated that the environmental and public interests groups either don’t seem to understand how this DEP game is played; or the are willing to rely on promises from the Commissioner.
The bar has been set so low, some groups are willing to praise weak protections and withhold criticism of poor performance by DEP.
As a result, its business as usual with developers and industrial corporations in charge, while public health and the natural landscape are jeopardized and destroyed.
It’s very tough for us lay people to read the DEP docs; thanks for putting this critical weakening of the buffer regs into words we can all understand. And for the great photos and captions that make it hard to miss the point.
It’s nonsensical that the DEP and Highlands Council continue to erode the scientific proofs, demonstrations, analysis, etc., required for encroachment into areas that protect our water supply and quality.
The PEER press release you refer to suggests this is a sign that the DEP is adopting the Builders Association view that allowing development in buffers actually reduces water pollution. I’d like to hear more on this, especially “compared to farming.”–i.e., if it’s a choice between farming & development, DEP says development is better? Or is DEP beginning to lean toward the view that developing the land protects the water quality more than leaving it in its natural state?
And I presume this is different than the magical 125% recharge that some builders are promising–and that the DEP is accepting despite the fact that no science seems to support it–since that has to do w/aquifer, right? And with quantity, not quality? Whereas this has to do with waterbodies, and quality?
Also, how about more on what the DEP means when it says it’s rolling back the buffer regs as the 2007 order “did not effectively account for activities that would enhance the overall function value of the SWRPA [Special Water Resource Protection Area Functional Value Analysis]” and that “projects that would potentially have a net positive effect in the SWRPA failed the analysis.” Projects that could have a net positive effect?
Sounds like it is suggesting that builders are better than nature at preserving water quality and quantity.
This all sounds like magic to me. Your aptly titled “road to nowhere” is only being built because we are reverting to the false science of the Middle Ages.
But at least the Middle Ages allowed for the possibility of the “sacred” in nature (as HRH Prince Charles has referred to)–we’re stripping it of everything.
In response to questions “compared to farming” please refer to Attachment A of the 2008 FVA Guidance document.
There you will note various “pollutant loading factors” from various land uses.
Check out residential low density (i.e large lot sprawl) and compare those numbers to “barren land” (?successional field?) and to agriculture, especially for nutrients (P/N) and TSS, that are the primary cause of water quality impairment in NJ.
Builder Assc. can rely on these loading factors to argue that sprawl residential development and conversion of farms and fields to development improves water quality.
Of course this ignores the many other ecological functions provided by a stream buffer and water quantity issues, but hey, the Builders are likely to argue that if pass one test an you pass them all!