New Jersey keeps talking about where to build the next wave of homes. Ben Spinelli wants to know where the water will come from.
Spinelli, Executive Director of the New Jersey Highlands Council, said the Highlands region supplies drinking water to about 7 million people across the state, even though only about 850,000 people live there. Every new home, he said, needs about 500 gallons of water a day.
“Where’s it going to come from?” he asked.
And here’s the part that should worry planners: no one really knows how much growth the supply can handle.
“We have no real idea what the capacity of the state is in terms of population versus drinking water supply,” he said.
When Spinelli ran the state’s Office of Smart Growth in the 2000s, planners projected New Jersey would grow from 8.5 million to about 9 million people. It’s now about 9.5 million. Add climate change, with last year’s severe drought fresh in mind, and he said the state can’t treat the Highlands Act of 2004 as a job finished.
“We kind of turned our backs on it, thinking the job was done,” he said. “It’s not.”
Spinelli spoke Tuesday at the Rutgers Center for Real Estate symposium at The Heldrich in New Brunswick, on a panel about balancing growth and preservation. He was joined by Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Ed Potosnak, Princeton Councilwoman Mia Sacks and Dan Kennedy CEO of the Commercial Real Estate Development Association.
Adam Zellner, President of Greener by Design, was the moderator.
Here are eight other things we heard from the panel.
- Potosnak: DEP rarely says no
This may be a surprise to delayed developers, but Potosnak said 97% of the department’s permits are approved. He wants applicants to treat DEP as a partner, not a roadblock, since it says no only about three times in 100.
- Potosnak: DEP has cut backlog of permits
When Potosnak arrived, the backlog of letters of interpretation, which tell owners where they can and can’t build because of wetlands, stretched more than 18 months. “My heart sank,” he said.
He said DEP has since cut that backlog by 75% – and has cut the backlog of remedial action permits, needed before cleaned-up contaminated sites can be redeveloped, by 55%.
- Sacks: Green growth is possible
Sacks said Princeton, one of the state’s most historic towns, has grown more in the past several years than in the previous 50. It passed the state’s first ADU ordinance and overhauled a 40-year-old master plan. Its fourth-round affordable housing plan is all transit-oriented development, she said. “Not a single blade of green space will be removed,” she said.
Her message to other local officials: “Growth and preservation are not opposing values.”
- Kennedy: Site selectors passing on N.J.
Kennedy said that when you ask corporate site selectors whether New Jersey makes their top five, the honest answer is usually no.
“The answer too often is no, so we’re not in play,” he said.
- Sacks: Lawsuits are too easy, too detrimental
Sacks said the legal system makes it too easy for small groups, especially in wealthy towns like hers, to sue and hold up projects for years. She called for changes to the legal framework to stop that.
- Kennedy: Private sector needs to step up
Kennedy, a former DEP assistant commissioner, said the private sector has to do better, too. He recalled a local bakery facing an unaffordable septic system. His staff came up with a more creative design that met the standards, and the price dropped from about $50,000 to about $5,000. The bakery opened six months later.
- Potosnak: DEP is hiring — and addressing energy
Potosnak said the budget included $4.3 million for 49 new permitting positions, the first staffing boost of its kind at DEP in 15 years. DEP got permission to make offers contingent on the budget passing. When it did, he said, all 49 were at their desks.
Among other duties, the DEP team is working on nearly 30 energy projects to help get more power online. Potosnak said staff are now calling developers to ask where their applications are.
- Nebraska (who knew) came up. Twice
Potosnak said a visit to Lincoln, Nebraska, showed him what a newer city can do: every street had green infrastructure built in to handle runoff. New Jersey was built long before anyone knew to do that, and it still has combined sewers that mix sewage and rainwater. That’s one reason flooding is such a challenge.
“A bakery that’s flooded can’t bake,” he said.
Spinelli brought up Nebraska, too, as a reminder of what New Jersey has going for it.
“A bad year in New Jersey is a boom year in Nebraska,” he said.
