The state’s Highlands Council has been quietly and steadily accomplishing its mission — despite working with four vacant seats, continuing criticism over its lack of compensation to landowners and some calls for repeal of the Highlands Act. Since September, the council has approved final plans submitted by 17 municipalities and two counties, Somerset and Passaic. It is reviewing plans...
Jack Schrier, Highlands Council member, listens during a monthly meeting of the Highlands Council in Chester.The state’s Highlands Council has been quietly and steadily accomplishing its mission — despite working with four vacant seats, continuing criticism over its lack of compensation to landowners and some calls for repeal of the Highlands Act.
Since September, the council has approved final plans submitted by 17 municipalities and two counties, Somerset and Passaic. It is reviewing plans by 42 more municipalities and three more counties.
"People who want to repeal the Highlands Act get more attention than they deserve," said Jack Schrier of Mendham Township, the council’s acting chairman. "Many towns are happy to be in the Highlands area. They’re in favor of preservation as opposed to sprawl."
Fifteen of the approved municipalities are located entirely or partially in the Highlands preservation area, the most environmentally sensitive region involving a total of 52 municipalities where compliance with the act is required by law. Two of the municipalities — Lebanon Borough and High Bridge — are located entirely in the planning area, where participation is optional.
The council is reviewing plans by 36 municipalities with land in the preservation area, as all but Mansfield Township have met the requirement to submit conformance documents. Meanwhile, six more towns located entirely in the planning area — Alpha, Far Hills, Parsippany, Phillipsburg, Stanhope and Wharton — have submitted plans.
Even with six members serving after their terms expired and just five in regular terms on the 15-member council, the panel hasn’t been stymied, Schrier said, because "the work is being done by the staff."
Formally known as the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council, the panel’s main goal is to limit development in parts of a seven-county region in northern New Jersey that provides water to 5 million state residents. But the council also has a lesser-known mission: to assist towns in devising development strategies that don’t harm the water supply.
It is that second role that has encouraged many towns to conform with the act, even in the planning area where it is not required, said Eileen Swan, the council’s executive director.
The turning point came in September, according to Swan, when Byram Township — located in both the preservation and planning areas — had a plan approved that includes development of a new town center.
"That showed the council could take appropriate action to work on the growth side as well as the preservation side," Swan said.
Byram had been trying for awhile to get a conservation-minded growth program going, "and we worked with them to reshape their proposed center," Swan said.
"We’re hoping it will help development," agreed Byram Township Councilman Scott Olson. "In the condition we’re in now, anything will help."
Designated as the Highlands Village Center, it is a 300-acre area near the junction of Route 206 and Lackawanna Drive, a county road, that targets for development a 60-acre site near a ShopRite supermarket. The plan calls for a mixed-used district with shops, offices and 150 housing units, including townhomes and small single-family houses.
"We sat with the Highlands Council and used their resources and shifted into more appropriate uses," Olson said.
The township’s original plan called for putting a green area, or "central park," in the middle of the developed area, Olson said. The council convinced the township to move the green area next to a forested area to serve as a buffer while not changing plans for the mixed-use district.
"We rearranged pieces of the puzzle," Olson said. "It’s all been confirmed to conform with the Highlands Act, so as soon as the economy picks up, that’s going to be one of the most valuable parcels in Sussex County."
In March, a similar incentive proved enticing to Lopatcong Township, whose approved plan includes a $10,000 grant from the Highlands Council to study the feasibility of redeveloping the site of a former Ingersoll-Rand plant, now a contaminated site undergoing cleanup.
Garrett Van Vliet, chairman of the Lopatcong Planning Board, said the township has been trying for 10 years to get something built on the Ingersoll-Rand site, calling it "our last piece of land that can be commercially developed."
Van Vliet offered practical reasons for the township’s push to conform with the Highlands Act.
"The rules and regulations have survived all the court challenges they’ve had, so you’re pretty much locked in anyway," he pointed out. "We found it’s easier to work with them than against them."
Lopatcong is located in both the preservation area and the planning area, and it was not required to submit a Highlands plan in the planning area. However, submitting a plan proved the simplest way for the township to develop the Ingersoll-Rand property, Van Vliet explained. By getting the council’s approval in the planning area, the township avoided a more "circuitous" process that would have involved the state Department of Environmental Protection and various independent groups, Van Vliet said.
Gov. Chris Christie has been one of the leading critics of the Highlands Act lately. At a March town hall meeting in Hopatcong, the governor said the 2004 act was "based on a lie" because it has not provided compensation to landowners whose properties have lost value due to development restrictions.
Christie denounced the Democratic leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee for delaying action on his nominees to the Highlands Council, who he said would bring "a different approach and sensibilities."
He then told voters, "If you give me a Republican Legislature in November, you’re not going to believe what’s going to happen."
Lou Sceusi, the Republican mayor of Rockaway Township, whose Highlands plan for both the preservation and planning areas was approved in February, said Highlands landowners are no more deserving of help than are people who lost money in the stock market.
"All of us have lost money in some investment," said Sceusi.
Development can be costly, he added. "It puts us in kind of a Ponzi scheme — you keep building and paying the bills for infrastructure, roads, sewers, schools."
"The Highlands Act is a legitimate way to make people responsible for protecting the water supply," Sceusi said. "In the future, it’s a commodity people will envy."