Water Works 35 - 11/10/03

Water Works Rides Again

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen – Water Works rides again. It’s good to be back.

If you need a refresher after this session you should take a look at our Reader’s Guide. If you have joined us before and a glance at the Guide doesn’t do the trick, I suggest you dip into episodes 2, 27 and 31-33. Newcomers who prefer to fast-track your way into our tale should try that too if you have any problems following along.

Now, to appreciate what I’m about to tell you, you need to know something I didn’t tell you before I took my break. I was keeping it as a surprise. Back then we were practically laying bets in Franklin that the NJDEP was only days away from approving the increase in high-volume water mining here that we had been fighting since March. It turned out we were wrong.

Apparently, the evidence against the state’s plan stopped it cold, especially the testimony of our own Fellow Correspondent, excerpted here in Water Works episodes 6-12 and 14-21. As of last Friday, we still did not know whether the NJDEP intends to inflict any more abuse on our alarmingly overdrawn water supply, or whether the state would rather avoid embarrassing itself more than it already has in this matter.

That eight-month wait is unprecedented. A water allocation approval never takes that long if the allocation is intended for a commercial grower, as this one is. Normally about sixty days pass at most, from the close of public comment on the state’s recommendation for a permit to pump, until new wells are sunk and an aquifer is tapped. But the delay in this instance should not be taken to mean the NJDEP is considering a denial, either. Water allocation increases to commercial growers are only denied when competing agricultural users of the same water supply object. As a practice for this type of allocation, the NJDEP pays little attention to other concerns.

In other words, we’ve fought the NJDEP to a draw for nearly six months, something never done before under these circumstances, according to the experts I’ve asked. That may explain why even in Franklin many people naturally assume the NJDEP actually won. Even I never believed we could keep the state at bay for as long as we have. It was generally understood here that this affair would end in an administrative law court, which would then kick it back to the NJDEP for reconsideration with all the state’s data finally available for all of us to see. The system is supposed to work that way, at least. In any case, when I left for my break I fully expected the NJDEP to give the official go-ahead for its water allocation increase within two or three weeks after I returned.

By the time those episodes would have run, I had learned that the NJDEP’s geologists had not yet made any recommendations. Their findings, when subjected to peer review, had been shown up as seriously flawed – a defense of the indefensible. Because it seemed unwise to offer the NJDEP what would have amounted to advice on workarounds, we thought it best here at Water Works to hold off saying anything and wait them out. Three months later, the state now seems to have made up its mind. It is rumored that some as yet unknown mutation of the NJDEP’s original plan is expected from Trenton soon. That’s why I’ve been gone so long, and why I’m back.

Our story will resume next week, about where we left it. A few new wrinkles aside, we are still working from our original plan. But we may have a while to wait before we hear from the NJDEP. The state is unlikely to make any rash moves because, as previously announced by Governor McGreevey and NJDEP Commissioner Campbell, Lockatong Creek was designated as a C-1 stream in last week’s New Jersey Register, subject to public comment.

It should seem unlikely that the state, after first pledging to protect the Lockatong’s headwaters, would then introduce another plan guaranteed to destroy them. Of course that is exactly what happened here to Sidney Brook just a year ago, so I could be wrong. As they say in the lottery ads: “You never know.”

Ron Gutkowski