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03-31-03, 08:26 AM
FLORIO TAKES HELM OF PINELANDS COMMISSION
Date: 030330
From: http://www.app.com/
By Lawrence Hajna, Courier-Post
Published in the Asbury Park Press, 3/30/03
In 1977, Jim Florio, then a young congressman from Camden County,
took a helicopter ride over the vast, seemingly unbroken woods of
South Jersey's Pine Barrens.
His mission: To convince Cecil Andrus, Interior secretary under
President Carter, that this ecologically unique place deserved
protection.
The tough politician, who grew up in Brooklyn and practiced law in
Camden, won that support - and the creation the following year of the
million-acre Pinelands National Reserve, one of the East Coast's last
great protected woodlands.
More than a quarter century later, the former congressman and
governor is back, now as chairman of the Pinelands Commission. The
state zoning agency preserves the Pinelands' core of wetlands and
forests by steering development to the region's perimeter.
Florio, appointed by Gov. McGreevey, says he wants to follow a
moderate course, one that allows "sustainable" development while
protecting the region's ecology.
"I've been out talking to as many people as possible to establish the
view that this commission, under my tenure, is going to be interested
in collaborating, hearing from the people," he said.
A TURNING POINT
Environmentalists and developers hope Florio soon takes a more
definitive course. Each side argues the plan set up to manage the
Pinelands is at a turning point, that it is effectively strangling the
region - but for different reasons.
Environmentalists say the plan slowed growth but did not halt gradual
degradation of the region's water supplies, forests and habitats that
support rare wildlife such as the Pine Barrens tree frog, timber
rattlesnake and bog asphodel, a member of the lily family.
But developers argue the plan chokes municipalities targeted to
absorb growth by failing to help them deal with the increased need for
schools, roads, water lines and other infrastructure.
In just four months on the job, Florio, experts say, has brought a
new level of respectability and visibility to the commission, a
powerful but often overlooked body that controls land use in 22
percent of the state.
"The Pinelands is at a crossroads," said David Rebovich, a political
science professor at Rider University. "South Jersey is burgeoning,
and there are enormous growth pressures. With a Jim Florio, it looks
like the McGreevey administration is serious about overseeing the
process of future growth intelligently."Balanced moderation
In a recent interview, Florio, a Democrat who made his political mark
by writing the federal Superfund toxic waste cleanup law, spoke of
"balanced moderation" for the Pinelands. But his pro-environment
leanings surfaced frequently.
Florio laments national environmental policy under President Bush. He
also believes open-space preservation ultimately will win out over
development pressures, in the Pinelands and across New Jersey.
"I'm convinced that...traffic congestion is driving much of this," he
said. "People are becoming frustrated with the roads. People are
saying, 'My life is not livable.' "
This kind of talk gives environmentalists high hopes. They long
complained the commission, controlled for much of the 1990s by
appointments made by former Republican Gov. Christie Whitman, leaned
too far toward development interests.
This, they argued, resulted in controversies undermining fundamental
conservation principles of the plan, including the approval of a high
school in a protected agricultural area of Tabernacle and the fencing
off of rattlesnake dens to allow construction of an Evesham
subdivision.
Florio insists he will not second-guess past decisions. "You don't
fight the battles of the past. What you try to do is steer a course
forward in the way you want it to go," he said.
Florio, who lives in Metuchen, Middlesex County, says the Pinelands
Comprehensive Management Plan, which initially fueled somewhat serious
talk of South Jersey seceding from the rest of the state, had achieved
stability well before his appointment last fall.
"The whole Pinelands concept removed a lot of the antagonistic,
adversarial relationships that existed in the early days," Florio
said.Simmering resentment
Still, resentment simmers today. Worried that regional zoning would
depress land values, Atlantic County farmer Charles Bylone, now 80 and
retired, attended public meetings in the 1970s to fight regional
protection.
In recent years, the commission and state Department of Agriculture
put in place some programs that attempt to compensate land-owners. But
Bylone says the problem was never fully resolved.
"We're still under those restrictions, whether we like it or not,"
Bylone said. "It didn't seem quite right then, and it still doesn't
seem quite right that some people have had to sacrifice their land."
The 15-member commission is diverse, consisting of environmen-
talists, business people, farmers, even a Baptist minister. Florio is
the first chairman most New Jersey residents would recognize, even if
most remember him as the one-term governor who taxed toilet paper.
This legacy may have derailed his bid for the U.S. Senate in the 2000
Democratic primary, but experts believe Florio's stature as a former
governor gives him the potential to leave an indelible mark on the
reserve.
This is because the commission is conducting a review of the man-
agement plan to determine where it's working and where it's not.
Environmentalists argue that the plan, although having slowed growth,
still allows too much development in ecologically fragile forests.
They also worry that agricultural runoff is altering the acidic water
many native species need.
The commission has approved about 40,000 housing units in the reserve
since the plan took effect in the early 1980s. About 2,300 - or less
than 6 percent - have been approved in core forest and agriculture
preservation areas.
Florio points to this low percentage as evidence the plan is suc-
ceeding. But he is vague about whether he believes it needs more work.
This does not surprise Carleton Montgomery, director of the Pinelands
Preservation Alliance, an environmental group.
"I can see why he's reluctant to take up a cause before being sure
it's the right approach," Montgomery said. "If you choose too
soon...you could undermine your ultimate goal, especially when you
come in with as much stature as Jim Florio."
Rick Van Osten, vice president of the Builders League of South Jersey,
says it's too early to figure out how developers will be treated
by the commission under Florio. He hopes Florio has become more
sympathetic to business since his early days in politics.Who should
pay?
Van Osten argues the commission needs to help "growth" municipali-
ties - places like Egg Harbor Township, Hamilton and Galloway - deal
with the costs of infrastructure so development can take place
without creating extreme funding pressures on municipalities.
"It's not that anyone is saying they should put a 300-home
development in Batsto," Van Osten said. "'But if all of New Jersey
benefits from preserving the Pinelands, shouldn't the state pay for
the infrastructure?"
Florio concedes the commission can play a more active role in helping
municipalities plan ahead so they "won't face development that
overwhelms them." But he quickly adds that tools have long been
available to help them control growth.
Florio, 65, is not committing to serving beyond his initial three-
year term. He says the job, which has no salary, so far has been a
"pleasurable but very time-consuming set of responsibilities."
This worries Montgomery. "We may not have him for a long time. He's a
busy man," he said. "I hope he starts putting his fingerprints on this
sooner than later because I really worry he'll move on to other
interests."
Florio's connection to the Pinelands comes largely from his time in
Congress, when he fought for the region's protection.
Most of his congressional district encompassed urban Camden County
and rural Gloucester County. But parts, including then largely rural
Winslow, extended into the Pinelands.
Some of his initial concerns about the region grew out of the
nation's oil crises of the 1970s. Proposals were being floated to
reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil by drilling wells
off New Jersey's coast.
Oil could have been piped across the Pinelands to refineries in South
Jersey and Philadelphia, Florio said. He feared a pipeline break could
devastate the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer under the Pinelands. It is
one of the largest and most pristine groundwater supplies on the East
Coast.
"Obviously, the concern on the part of people who understood any of
these things, myself included, was this was not a really great idea,"
Florio said.
He also foresaw an explosion in the demand for housing in the
Pinelands around Atlantic City resulting from the start of casino
gambling in 1978.
A PIVOTAL VISIT
As a member of the House Interior Committee, which oversees national
parks, Florio was able to persuade Andrus, the Interior secretary, to
visit the Pinelands, then more commonly known as the Pine Barrens.
Andrus, a native of Idaho, was amazed that such a wild place existed
in New Jersey, Florio recalled.
"What I was able to do was get someone to focus on saying, 'Hey, this
shouldn't all be west of the Mississippi, that we have some areas in
need of preservation in the East,' " Florio said.
Months earlier, Florio had introduced legislation to create the Pine
Barrens National Ecological Reserve. It called for a strong federal
role in protecting the region.
The bill was eventually merged into compromise legislation that
provided for more local input into Pinelands planning and led to state
legislation passed in 1979 that created the commission.
But Florio's initial bill is credited with turning what had been
years of talk and ineffectual regional planning into something
lasting.
Floyd West, at the time mayor of Bass River, spurred Florio's in-
terest in preserving the region, taking him on a tour of the area's
cranberry bogs, swamps and its globally unique pygmy-pine forests.
Federal lawmakers representing core Pinelands communities at the time
did not want to touch the idea of regional planning until Florio's
bill provided impetus, West recalled.
"(Florio) was absolutely the key person," West said. "He was the
spark plug."
Today, Florio takes pride in having set up the reserve.
"Looking at what happened in the '80s and '90s, with the sort of
unfettered development that took place all across the state, but for
the Pinelands plan it's difficult, maybe troubling, to imagine what
this area would look like," he said. "Frankly, with hindsight, I think
this area would be gone."
* * *
Copyright (c) 1997-2003 IN Jersey
Date: 030330
From: http://www.app.com/
By Lawrence Hajna, Courier-Post
Published in the Asbury Park Press, 3/30/03
In 1977, Jim Florio, then a young congressman from Camden County,
took a helicopter ride over the vast, seemingly unbroken woods of
South Jersey's Pine Barrens.
His mission: To convince Cecil Andrus, Interior secretary under
President Carter, that this ecologically unique place deserved
protection.
The tough politician, who grew up in Brooklyn and practiced law in
Camden, won that support - and the creation the following year of the
million-acre Pinelands National Reserve, one of the East Coast's last
great protected woodlands.
More than a quarter century later, the former congressman and
governor is back, now as chairman of the Pinelands Commission. The
state zoning agency preserves the Pinelands' core of wetlands and
forests by steering development to the region's perimeter.
Florio, appointed by Gov. McGreevey, says he wants to follow a
moderate course, one that allows "sustainable" development while
protecting the region's ecology.
"I've been out talking to as many people as possible to establish the
view that this commission, under my tenure, is going to be interested
in collaborating, hearing from the people," he said.
A TURNING POINT
Environmentalists and developers hope Florio soon takes a more
definitive course. Each side argues the plan set up to manage the
Pinelands is at a turning point, that it is effectively strangling the
region - but for different reasons.
Environmentalists say the plan slowed growth but did not halt gradual
degradation of the region's water supplies, forests and habitats that
support rare wildlife such as the Pine Barrens tree frog, timber
rattlesnake and bog asphodel, a member of the lily family.
But developers argue the plan chokes municipalities targeted to
absorb growth by failing to help them deal with the increased need for
schools, roads, water lines and other infrastructure.
In just four months on the job, Florio, experts say, has brought a
new level of respectability and visibility to the commission, a
powerful but often overlooked body that controls land use in 22
percent of the state.
"The Pinelands is at a crossroads," said David Rebovich, a political
science professor at Rider University. "South Jersey is burgeoning,
and there are enormous growth pressures. With a Jim Florio, it looks
like the McGreevey administration is serious about overseeing the
process of future growth intelligently."Balanced moderation
In a recent interview, Florio, a Democrat who made his political mark
by writing the federal Superfund toxic waste cleanup law, spoke of
"balanced moderation" for the Pinelands. But his pro-environment
leanings surfaced frequently.
Florio laments national environmental policy under President Bush. He
also believes open-space preservation ultimately will win out over
development pressures, in the Pinelands and across New Jersey.
"I'm convinced that...traffic congestion is driving much of this," he
said. "People are becoming frustrated with the roads. People are
saying, 'My life is not livable.' "
This kind of talk gives environmentalists high hopes. They long
complained the commission, controlled for much of the 1990s by
appointments made by former Republican Gov. Christie Whitman, leaned
too far toward development interests.
This, they argued, resulted in controversies undermining fundamental
conservation principles of the plan, including the approval of a high
school in a protected agricultural area of Tabernacle and the fencing
off of rattlesnake dens to allow construction of an Evesham
subdivision.
Florio insists he will not second-guess past decisions. "You don't
fight the battles of the past. What you try to do is steer a course
forward in the way you want it to go," he said.
Florio, who lives in Metuchen, Middlesex County, says the Pinelands
Comprehensive Management Plan, which initially fueled somewhat serious
talk of South Jersey seceding from the rest of the state, had achieved
stability well before his appointment last fall.
"The whole Pinelands concept removed a lot of the antagonistic,
adversarial relationships that existed in the early days," Florio
said.Simmering resentment
Still, resentment simmers today. Worried that regional zoning would
depress land values, Atlantic County farmer Charles Bylone, now 80 and
retired, attended public meetings in the 1970s to fight regional
protection.
In recent years, the commission and state Department of Agriculture
put in place some programs that attempt to compensate land-owners. But
Bylone says the problem was never fully resolved.
"We're still under those restrictions, whether we like it or not,"
Bylone said. "It didn't seem quite right then, and it still doesn't
seem quite right that some people have had to sacrifice their land."
The 15-member commission is diverse, consisting of environmen-
talists, business people, farmers, even a Baptist minister. Florio is
the first chairman most New Jersey residents would recognize, even if
most remember him as the one-term governor who taxed toilet paper.
This legacy may have derailed his bid for the U.S. Senate in the 2000
Democratic primary, but experts believe Florio's stature as a former
governor gives him the potential to leave an indelible mark on the
reserve.
This is because the commission is conducting a review of the man-
agement plan to determine where it's working and where it's not.
Environmentalists argue that the plan, although having slowed growth,
still allows too much development in ecologically fragile forests.
They also worry that agricultural runoff is altering the acidic water
many native species need.
The commission has approved about 40,000 housing units in the reserve
since the plan took effect in the early 1980s. About 2,300 - or less
than 6 percent - have been approved in core forest and agriculture
preservation areas.
Florio points to this low percentage as evidence the plan is suc-
ceeding. But he is vague about whether he believes it needs more work.
This does not surprise Carleton Montgomery, director of the Pinelands
Preservation Alliance, an environmental group.
"I can see why he's reluctant to take up a cause before being sure
it's the right approach," Montgomery said. "If you choose too
soon...you could undermine your ultimate goal, especially when you
come in with as much stature as Jim Florio."
Rick Van Osten, vice president of the Builders League of South Jersey,
says it's too early to figure out how developers will be treated
by the commission under Florio. He hopes Florio has become more
sympathetic to business since his early days in politics.Who should
pay?
Van Osten argues the commission needs to help "growth" municipali-
ties - places like Egg Harbor Township, Hamilton and Galloway - deal
with the costs of infrastructure so development can take place
without creating extreme funding pressures on municipalities.
"It's not that anyone is saying they should put a 300-home
development in Batsto," Van Osten said. "'But if all of New Jersey
benefits from preserving the Pinelands, shouldn't the state pay for
the infrastructure?"
Florio concedes the commission can play a more active role in helping
municipalities plan ahead so they "won't face development that
overwhelms them." But he quickly adds that tools have long been
available to help them control growth.
Florio, 65, is not committing to serving beyond his initial three-
year term. He says the job, which has no salary, so far has been a
"pleasurable but very time-consuming set of responsibilities."
This worries Montgomery. "We may not have him for a long time. He's a
busy man," he said. "I hope he starts putting his fingerprints on this
sooner than later because I really worry he'll move on to other
interests."
Florio's connection to the Pinelands comes largely from his time in
Congress, when he fought for the region's protection.
Most of his congressional district encompassed urban Camden County
and rural Gloucester County. But parts, including then largely rural
Winslow, extended into the Pinelands.
Some of his initial concerns about the region grew out of the
nation's oil crises of the 1970s. Proposals were being floated to
reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil by drilling wells
off New Jersey's coast.
Oil could have been piped across the Pinelands to refineries in South
Jersey and Philadelphia, Florio said. He feared a pipeline break could
devastate the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer under the Pinelands. It is
one of the largest and most pristine groundwater supplies on the East
Coast.
"Obviously, the concern on the part of people who understood any of
these things, myself included, was this was not a really great idea,"
Florio said.
He also foresaw an explosion in the demand for housing in the
Pinelands around Atlantic City resulting from the start of casino
gambling in 1978.
A PIVOTAL VISIT
As a member of the House Interior Committee, which oversees national
parks, Florio was able to persuade Andrus, the Interior secretary, to
visit the Pinelands, then more commonly known as the Pine Barrens.
Andrus, a native of Idaho, was amazed that such a wild place existed
in New Jersey, Florio recalled.
"What I was able to do was get someone to focus on saying, 'Hey, this
shouldn't all be west of the Mississippi, that we have some areas in
need of preservation in the East,' " Florio said.
Months earlier, Florio had introduced legislation to create the Pine
Barrens National Ecological Reserve. It called for a strong federal
role in protecting the region.
The bill was eventually merged into compromise legislation that
provided for more local input into Pinelands planning and led to state
legislation passed in 1979 that created the commission.
But Florio's initial bill is credited with turning what had been
years of talk and ineffectual regional planning into something
lasting.
Floyd West, at the time mayor of Bass River, spurred Florio's in-
terest in preserving the region, taking him on a tour of the area's
cranberry bogs, swamps and its globally unique pygmy-pine forests.
Federal lawmakers representing core Pinelands communities at the time
did not want to touch the idea of regional planning until Florio's
bill provided impetus, West recalled.
"(Florio) was absolutely the key person," West said. "He was the
spark plug."
Today, Florio takes pride in having set up the reserve.
"Looking at what happened in the '80s and '90s, with the sort of
unfettered development that took place all across the state, but for
the Pinelands plan it's difficult, maybe troubling, to imagine what
this area would look like," he said. "Frankly, with hindsight, I think
this area would be gone."
* * *
Copyright (c) 1997-2003 IN Jersey