Where were the Urban Mayors?
Could you imagine a public hearing up in the Catskills to determine the fate of New York City’s water supply and no representative from NY City even showing up?
The second of three final public hearings on the Highlands Regional Master Plan (RMP) took place tonight at an urban location: Passaic County Community College in Paterson.
The whole point of holding a public hearing outside the Highlands region was to allow urban interests to get involved and assure that their interests in their own water supply were protected by the Regional Master Plan (RMP).
As the Plan was developed, those interests were largely unrepresented and – by default – subordinated to the economic interest of rural Highlands landowners, developers, and the parochial “ratables chase” views of suburban Mayors.
The NJ Highlands provides the source of drinking water for 5.4 million NJ residents,and most of urban NJ – Newark, Paterson, Jersey City, et al all are dependent on Highlands water.
Newark’s reservoirs and watershed lands lie in the Highlands. The Boonton Reservoir that supplies Jersey City is fed by the Rockaway River that drains from the Highlands. The Passaic Valley Water Supply Commission takes water from the Passaic River. Paterson and Passaic county water rates are directly impacted by the Highlands RMP.
In an extreme example of environmental injustice, upstream Morris County sewer plants discharge pollution that forces Passaic to incur millions of dollars of costs in treatment to make water safe to drink. Residents in Morris County have lower sewer rates while urban residents of Paterson pay the price.
Highlands landowners make windfall profits from development that threatens urban NJ’s water supply.
The draft Highlands RMP will have a HUGE impact on whether these cities have adequate, clean, and affordable water.
So where was Corey Booker and urban mayors to argue for the strongest RMP protections for their water supply?
Not one showed up – they didn’t even send a representative.
Their absence was an embarrassment.
Could you imagine a public hearing up in the Catskills to determine the fate of New York City’s water supply and no representative from NY City even showing up?
Wolfe – this is a crying shame! Could it be that these urban mayors fear being put in the unenviable spot of actually taking a stand FOR something like a water user fee to help preserve these parcels? (he says tongue in cheek).
Seriously, it is the end user who have the most to gain, or lose, with this Regional Master Plan. And as the old oil filter ad says: “You can pay a little now, or a lot later!”
Keep up the fight!
SO
Wolfe, you’re absolutely right. And members of the public, with the exception of two or three people, weren’t there either (not even Paterson residents). It was really the enviros in attendance, and that was about it., not that the council wanted to hear what they had to say.
I think the Highlands Council didn’t promote these hearings, and they were mostly held at inconvenient times and at inconvenient places–probably by design. One of the few speakers from the public not affiliate dwith any group said that she had only inadvertently found out about the hearings. The whole process of developing the RMP has left out the water user for the most part.
The whole plan is a sorry mess at this point. And what about the press release that they distributed disputing the flaws in the plan? I think it is wrong for the HIghlands Council to be propagandizing their plan at such a hearing. Their job is not to convince us their flawed plan is good, it’s to make it strong and protective in the first place.