The Department of Environmental Protection is scaling back its controversial plans to expand flood zones and require higher building elevations, but the revisions are not enough and will make New Jersey more unaffordable, NJBIA said Tuesday.
Even with the proposed changes, the rules will still increase construction costs, making homes in coastal and river communities more expensive, and force homeowners to buy costly flood insurance for properties that have never flooded before and are unlikely to in the future, NJBIA Deputy Chief Government Affairs Officer Ray Cantor said.
“There’s no doubt that sea levels are rising, and we do think we should be changing our regulations to acknowledge that, but you need to use the right science,” Cantor said. “You cannot pick extreme examples and then impose them on New Jersey taxpayers – because at the end of the day we’re the ones who are paying for this.”
The DEP announced Monday it was revising its Resilient Environments and Landscapes (REAL) coastal flood rules, first proposed in 2024, to be “responsive to public comment and stakeholder feedback.” The proposed changes will be detailed in the July 21 edition of the New Jersey Register and open to additional public comment in September, DEP said.
In a press statement, DEP said the proposed changes would lower coastal zone flood elevations for new or substantially improved buildings from 5-feet above FEMA base elevations to 4-feet above FEMA base elevations.
If the proposed rules are adopted, DEP said it would revisit the sea-level rise and precipitation data incorporated into the rule every five years and amend the regulations if appropriate.
“As compared to the original 2024 proposal, the lower elevation effectively reduces the amount of additional coastal land area that would be subject to the building safety standards of New Jersey’s Flood Hazard Area Control Act,” the DEP statement said.
The proposed changes will also enable projects to proceed under pre-existing regulations if they reach certain planning, design, or permitting milestones by July 2026, which is within six months of DEP’s intended adoption of the REAL rules.
Cantor said the business community appreciates that the DEP saw the need to revise the proposed rules in response to feedback it received, but NJBIA is still disappointed that the proposed changes do not go further.
“The DEP is still changing land use regulations throughout the state, greatly expanding flood zones, and forcing building elevations to even higher than they are right now because of what we think are extreme projections of sea level rise that will harm urban redevelopment and impact housing costs throughout the state,” Cantor said.
“No credible scientist is predicting a 4-foot sea level rise,” Cantor said. “This proposal is still extreme and still an outlier.”
DEP said it would post a pre-recorded webinar on July 18 about the changes it is proposing to the REAL rules. The webinar can be viewed on DEP’s website here beginning Friday.
NJBIA’s statement issued Monday on the REAL rule changes can be viewed here.
