Jennifer Coffey, Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association
Protection for the water you drink, the air you breathe and the soil in which your food is grown is now open for negotiation.
As of Aug. 1, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is accepting applications for waivers to more than 100 environmental regulations. Applicants can receive such waivers on the grounds a regulation is “unduly burdensome” to “a particular project, activity or property.”
New Jersey’s environmental problems are legendary. Fortunately, leaders of both political parties have enacted strong laws to help reverse the damage done to our water, air and land over the years.
We should be focusing on correcting environmental problems caused by poor planning, but, instead, the waiver rule creates the potential for a haphazard and arbitrary approach to environmental protection.
Most of New Jersey’s environmental rules are designed to keep clean water and the environment from getting any worse. At a time in our history when we should be focusing on cleaning up pollution to our water, air and land, the waiver rule creates the potential for a haphazard approach to environmental protection.
It is with great concern for the impacts the waiver rule may have on increased flooding, destruction of environmentally sensitive habitats and further pollution of central New Jersey’s waterways that we have decided to join 27 other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Department of Environmental Protect to stop them from issuing waivers.
In our 63-year history, the Watershed Association has very rarely resorted to litigation. In this case, we have done so out of serious concern for the rule’s potential harm to our region’s water and environment.

