NJBIA is strongly opposing new Land Use rules proposed by the state Department of Environmental Protection that, as currently written, will ultimately force a retreat from the Jersey Shore and urban river communities throughout the state.
The DEP’s ‘Protecting Against Climate Threats’ rules will be officially proposed in the New Jersey Register on Thursday.
NJBIA Deputy Chief Government Affairs Officer Ray Cantor said the proposal will:
- Require a retreat from the Jersey Shore and urban river communities (e.g. Hoboken, Long Branch, Asbury Park)
- Create “no build” zones on New Jersey barrier islands and coastal communities, including urban areas
- Reduce the amount of affordable housing that can be built
- Impact the ability to rebuild if a home is damaged during a storm
- Harm redevelopment efforts in our urban areas
- Reduce property values, cause a loss of local tax revenue, and force more people to buy expensive flood insurance, even in areas that have never flooded and likely will never flood.
“The clear objective of the proposal is not to protect residents from rising seas but to make it harder to live, work, and develop along the coast,” Cantor said.
“This is the first step, a giant one at that, towards a managed retreat of the Jersey Shore. And it unfortunately does so while ignoring the most current climate science that shows the most realistic forecasts of sea level rise and its potential impacts.”
Cantor said the three key provisions of the PACT rules that will have real-world impacts on New Jersey shore communities include:
- The assumption of a 5-foot sea level rise (SLR) by 2100 and applying that standard today;
- The elimination of coastal centers;
- The application of a 150-foot riparian buffer along the bay side of barrier islands.
“The most onerous of these proposed changes is that of SLR,” Cantor said. “While we agree that the state should consider SLR rise and climate change projections in their coastal regulations, what the Murphy administration proposes goes far beyond any rational proposal. In fact, no other state, federal agency, or international entity is regulating SLR to this extreme extent.
“This is not to deny climate change. But we should be denying extreme and costly policies. The fact is the 5-foot standard is not supported by any current scientific study. In fact, it has been rejected as being of ‘low confidence’ and without a firm scientific foundation. Yet the DEP is pushing a SLR standard that will negatively impact everyone living, working or vacationing at the shore.”
Cantor said the DEP is relying on a low-confidence data point from a 2019 non-peer reviewed Rutgers report that calls for 5.1 feet of sea level rise by 2100.
“Every scientific study and paper published after the Rutgers report does not assume as much SLR,” Cantor said. “But even if the most widely accepted climate science assumes 1-3 feet of SLR, which also assumes the continued New Jersey land subsidence, why is the DEP proposing a 5-foot SLR rule?
“The fact is there is no proven science justifying DEP’s position. Unfortunately, the agency has chosen the route of trying to scare people as the start of a managed retreat strategy.”
Both the Senate Environment and Energy Committee and the Assembly Environment, Natural Resources, and Solid Waste Committee will meet jointly on Thursday, at the Toms River Municipal Complex, to discuss the PACT rules.
NJBIA and other business groups were not invited to speak but the association will submit written testimony to the committees on Thursday.
“We believe that the policy of the state should be one of resilience, not retreat,” Cantor said. “We should regulate to a 2-foot SLR, a protective, yet reasonable level from which we can adjust if needed.
“We should invest in our beaches and dunes, restore our coastal marshes, elevate buildings to appropriate levels, and study ways to protect against the inevitable storms to come.”
