Is New Jersey’s State Development & Redevelopment Plan the state’s Environmental Superpower?

By LRWP Board President Heather Fenyk, Ph.D., AICP/PP

New Jersey’s State Development and Redevelopment Plan – currently in cross-acceptance process across the state – is New Jersey’s first to recognize the importance of planning processes integrated at the watershed level. In the current political climate, the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership sees the state plan as an excellent first step toward collaborative engagement around environmental protections for our forests, wetlands, waters and soils.

Public Comment on NJ’s Preliminary State Plan is open until March 27, 2025

Within hours of returning to the oval office on January 20, 2025, President Trump unpacked the wrecking ball used during his first term to continue the process of dismantling US climate and environmental policies. With Executive Order “Unleashing America’s Energy,” Trump articulated an aggressive approach to encouraging energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters, framing a new goal: to establish the US as the leading producer of nonfuel minerals. On February 25, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), part of the Executive Office of the President, published an “interim final” rule proposal in the Federal Register: “Removal of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Implementing Regulations.” Until now, under the coordination of the CEQ, NEPA has guided agencies responsible for oversight of federal transportation, energy and mining projects to consider: Is there a safer way? A smarter way? A way that doesn’t leave a mess for the next generation?

Rollback of these federal environmental laws is designed to put communities throughout the nation on the defensive. These federal actions pose a real threat to state and local efforts to limit planet-warming, asthma-inducing, carbon dioxide emissions. They make it harder for communities to effectively govern the pollutants discharged into local air, water and soils. And let’s not even talk about the impact of these rollbacks on ensuring protections for neighborhood forests and streams, or for the wetlands doing the lion’s share of holding stormwater during flood events, keeping it from entering our homes and streets.

Luckily in New Jersey, proactive thinking by the state Office of Planning Advocacy (OPA) and the State Planning Commission (SPC) means the state is well positioned for offense, not defense in terms of environmental protections. For the last several years these agencies have guided a series of public conversations around how to ensure safer, smarter planning and redevelopment in a way that is not only sensitive to environmental impacts, but also considers environmental restoration and enhancements, preserves special historic sites, and minimizes risks and hazards related to global climate change now and into the future. The result of these conversations is the Preliminary State Development and Redevelopment Plan (or Preliminary State Plan). Public Comment on NJ’s Preliminary State Plan is open until March 27, 2025, with public “Cross Acceptance” meetings scheduled in each County through the end of April.

Through the process of cross-acceptance, members of the public are invited to provide input into the Preliminary State Plan. This process helps bring attention to issues of local concern, and ensures that municipal, county, and regional initiatives are taken into consideration during the process. Final approval of the State Plan involves establishing regional agreements in areas of land use, transportation, housing, economic development and provision of public infrastructure. Strong collaborative planning efforts, like that offered through the State Plan Cross-Acceptance process, offer representation at multiple political scales. As a state-wide collaborative planning exercise, cross-acceptance facilitates local, county and state communication on development and redevelopment. More importantly, in Home Rule states like New Jersey, cross-acceptance helps facilitate planning collaboration across biophysical scales. Importantly in this regard, the 2024 Preliminary State Plan is New Jersey’s first to recognize the importance of planning processes integrated at the watershed level.

As an organization focused on watershed management, the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership views New Jersey’s Preliminary State Plan as a step in the right direction. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Do we think New Jersey’s State Plan should at the outset be organized around watershed-based resource planning and permitting? YES. Do we think all land management should begin by considering ecological functions, and that New Jersey’s State Plan should provide guidance on how to integrate county and municipal land use planning with information on the carrying capacity of our natural systems? YES. Should New Jersey’s State Plan be specific about impacts to hydrologic systems? YES. Should the plan provide more detail regarding the how-tos of restoration, and introduce concepts like re-naturing and rewilding to guide collaborative landscape management? YES and YES. All that said, in the current political climate does the LRWP see the state plan as an excellent first step toward collaborative engagement around environmental protections for our forests, wetlands, waters and soils? YES, Absolutely.

New Jersey’s Preliminary State Development & Redevelopment Plan may do more than help New Jersey’s municipalities and counties work collaboratively to protect our air, water, land and special historic sites, and to minimize risks and hazards related to global climate change now and into the future. If New Jersey adopts the State Plan in the face of environmental rollbacks designed to put states on the defensive with respect to federal actions, it will demonstrate the certain superpower of a collaboratively defined and collectively held vision of environmental protections for now and into the future.

The LRWP will provide comments at the Preliminary State Plan Cross-Acceptance discussion at Middlesex County on Monday March 24, 6-8pm. A list of dates and times for other meetings throughout the state can be found here. These events are open to the public – we encourage you to join us in the public engagement process.