Legislative Veto of Christie DEP Flood Rules Stalled by Assembly Democrats
Assembly Resolution Not Posted For Vote on Thursday’s Final Session
If not posted for vote, Resolution dies & Veto effort must start anew in 2016
The Assembly version of the Resolution (ACR 249) to veto the Christie DEP’s proposed Flood Hazard rule rollbacks has not been posted for a vote on Thursday’s final session.
The Resolution was approved by the Assembly Environment Committee a month ago and has stalled.
The Senate version (SCR 180) was introduced, approved by Committee, and passed the full Senate in a just 3 days, so we had expected there was a political consensus and a sense of urgency by the Democrats to block the Christie DEP’s proposed rollbacks.
In fact, we had hoped that the veto of the Flood Hazard rules would send a message to the Christie DEP and set the stage for an even more important veto of the Christie DEP’s “overhaul” of the Water Quality Management Planning rules.
DEP Commissioner Bob Martin has announced to the business community that he has plans to “overhaul” all the DEP land use regulations, so the freshwater wetlands rules and Highlands rules are next on the chopping block.
The legal, regulatory, and policy issues were vetted extensively by hours of testimony to the Senate Environment Committee and I’ve written about them here at length, so we won’t repeat that exercise.
The main points are that the proposed rules would weaken current flood and water quality protections, and are opposed not only by the entire NJ environmental community, but by regulators at US EPA and FEMA.
US EPA has written that the proposal would violate the federal Clean Water Act and adoption of the rules could jeopardize millions of dollars in federal EPA funds or trigger EPA revocation of NJ’s delegation to implement the Clean Water Act.
FEMA has written that the proposal does not comply with FEMA regulations and is inconsistent with National Flood Insurance Program requirements and could jeopardize eligibility for federal flood insurance and receipt of disaster recovery funds. The NJ League of Municipalities opposed the proposal for those same reasons.
Politically, the proposal would repeal the Category One (C1) 300 foot stream buffer protections, which were a major part of Governor McGreevey’s clean water legacy.
The legal and policy basis for the C1 buffers, i.e. antidegradation, later became the basis for McGreevey’s other legacy, the Highlands Act.
Please call Assembly Speaker Prieto’s Office (201) 770-1303 and ask that the Speaker post ACR 249 for thursday’s session.
If he fails to do so, we must start all over again in next legislative session in 2016.