DEP Puts Flood Hazard Rules On Hold: DEP Already Playing Games

DEP Puts Flood Hazard Rules On Hold: DEP Already Playing Games

Yesterday at the Senate Environment and Energy Hearing, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has said they will not adopt the current Flood Hazard Rules until they make some changes. They will take input from the EPA and individual citizens. They say they will make changes to headwaters and mitigation. In light of this announcement the Committee held SCR66 (Lesniak). This resolution overrides the DEP's proposal to revise Flood Hazard Area Control Act Rules, Coastal Zone Management Rules, and Stormwater Management Rules. It determines that the rules are inconsistent with legislative intent. Despite the DEP announcing that they plan to change the Flood Hazard Rules, The Sierra Club still supports this resolution. We haven’t seen any changes and as of now we believe that these proposed rules will increase flooding and degrade water quality and violate state law. This resolution has been through both houses once and if it passes both houses again, the rules will be voided. The resolution was released from the Assembly Environment Committee last week. Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, released the following statement:

“In order to stop the Legislature from overturning the Flood Hazard Rules, the DEP announced that they will delay adopting them. This would never have happened without the Legislature standing up for clean water and against the Christie Administration. The Legislature passed a resolution and are going to pass it again saying that the rules violate legislative intent of the Clean Water Act. This is a political victory as well as a victory for the environment. We want to thank the Legislature for making it happen.

“Now that there is a delay, the DEP is already playing games. They’re having an invitation-only stakeholder meeting on March 15^th at the DEP building with hand-picked participates. Groups like the Sierra Club and others who have been leading the fight against these rules have not been invited. Some of the groups that were invited haven’t even opposed the rule or done any work on the rule and are there just to help the DEP move forward. This is part of the DEP’s game of divide and conquer that allows them to go unchallenged in their rollbacks of 40 years of water protections. Just like they had developers and polluters write the rules in private, this stakeholder process is also done behind closed doors. If they really wanted to make changes, the process would be open and transparent.

“The only reason the DEP put these Rules on hold was to avoid political embarrassment. The only changes they will make will be minimal and be made in order to get around the Legislature. For example, the proposed changes don’t deal with SWRPA or Riparian Corridors. This way they can get around the Legislative Veto and keep 90% of the bad rule in place. This is why the Legislature needs to continue to move forward with the resolution because the DEP will only be doing the minimal amount of work.

“There has been opposition to these rules from both governmental agencies and concerned citizens. The EPA and FEMA have come out against these rules. The DEP tried to say that the EPA approved the rules when in fact they opposed them. The DEP has said that these rules met legislative intent when they don’t. After all, Governor Christie called these “Lisa Jackson’s overreach.” The DEP has lied all along and are only making changes now because of the political backlash.

“The resolution to override the rule is now on hold until May but we want it go forward now. The Legislature wants to wait until they see what the DEP comes out with. We believe they should pass it now since the DEP wouldn’t even be making changes if it wasn’t for the Legislature in the first place. It’s the pressure from the Legislature that would force them to make real changes and not just minor ones. We need them to continue that pressure with this resolution so we can work to get real rules in place that won’t make flooding and pollution worse.

“The Legislature passed this resolution once and now we need them to pass it a second time. This will void these rules and stop Christie’s rollbacks of these critical water safeguards. We need them to take the resolution off of hold and get it up for a floor vote as soon as possible. This will help protect New Jersey from flooding and protect our drinking water. We need the Legislature to overturn these rules for good by passing this resolution again because they are dangerous and damaging to the environment and we don’t believe the DEP’s changes will make them any better.

“We can’t trust the DEP when it comes to our environment, they’re already playing games and will continue to try and rollback protections on clean water. This is why we need the Legislature to move forward with the resolution. The DEP may have said they want to add changes to the Flood Hazard Rules but until we actually see changes, we need to make sure we’re protecting New Jersey’s waterways. The Legislature needs to trust and verify what the DEP is doing. We can’t trust what the DEP is doing to protect our waterways. This was the first time that the Legislature was going to prevent one of Governor Christie’s rollbacks on the environment. We need to keep that pressure up and the Legislature needs to pass the resolution. The Legislature is supposed to take this up again in May and we look forward to them overturning these rules.”