Water Works 51 - 5/7/04

Which Side Would You Have Picked at the Alamo?

Reliable sources tell me we’re finally going to lose this fight. Unlike the watersheds of the New Jersey Highlands, which the state has been so keen on protecting lately, our streams and aquifers here on the Hunterdon Plateau have been deemed expendable. The NJDEP is not just moving ahead with plans to mine more of Quakertown’s water – those plans have been fast-tracked.

It’s almost understandable. While both the Sierra Club and the Delaware Riverkeeper have threatened to take the state to court if it acts as it intends, that is really all the clout we have in Trenton. Our state legislators have traditionally avoided us at best, and we fared even worse the last time we asked a governor for help. Of course, that was before serious talk by public officials about New Jersey’s long-looming water crisis was allowed in New Jersey. But when Governor McGreevey and Commissioner Campbell put water at the top of their agenda, we assumed they meant our water too. We never would have guessed that their people would make matters worse.

After Christie Whitman’s NJDEP last increased the amount of water pumped here, during a record drought (40), most of us assumed the state would not be back for more. Its mismanagement of our watersheds had become too public by then. (13) Only a pack of fools would risk more publicity with another attempt, was what we thought. Math any high-school student could master said what the state had done to us could never be defended. (50) Some of us were fools enough to imagine the McGreevey-Campbell administration would be more amenable to reason than Whitman’s, and might start undoing what could no longer be denied.

Instead, it revived a dormant proposal from the Whitman years to increase the amount of water pumped by the largest single user here, the Garden State Growers and Quaker Valley Farms complex. (1-2) The state presented its plan to us at a public hearing in March, 2003. You have seen the case it made. It distorted facts and logic beyond recognition to justify its decision not to investigate our history of failed wells. (39-41) It never noted Lockatong Creek’s role in supplying a drinking water reservoir that serves 500,000 people. (43-44) It ignored a history of low water flows in the creek and shrinking wetlands at the creek’s headwaters. (45-47) Although the state knew water was being pumped from the upper Lockatong basin at 5 times the safe extraction rate the state once ratified here with us (48), it didn’t use that rate in its calculations.

The result would have shown that the entire Lockatong basin was pumped to its limit. In place of the truth the state used another creek in place of the Lockatong, to raise the rate, and it doubled the size of the watershed. Then it presented that fiction to the public as evidence. (49-50)

On top of that, it cut a week from the public comment period on its plan for no reason (13), and never made public the data from critical pumping tests it performed here. (14) The NJDEP requires that all such data – scientific lab notes, in effect – be made available for all such tests. Finally, here is the worst news. None of the questions Water Works has raised about the NJDEP’s conduct will be addressed before it makes its decision. The only explanation any of us will see will be the usual “Staff Report” and “Response to Comment” documents afterwards.

There is one last question the NJDEP should answer before it proceeds any further – whether it can be trusted to act in good faith at all times as the trustee of New Jersey’s water. (33) We should not be forced into litigation to settle that point. That is our right as citizens of this state and it’s Commissioner Bradley Campbell’s duty to respect it. Before the lawyers for both sides start firing away, Mr. Campbell should tell us why we should have to expend the scarce resources of a small township and a pair of non-profits to fight the state, when we have already paid his troops rather handsomely to get their jobs done the right way on the first try. The NJDEP spends more money in two days than Franklin Township spends in a year. Our tax dollars should pay for something better than lies.

Governor McGreevey asked two memorable questions in his 2003 State of the State address, only weeks before the NJDEP held that hearing in Quakertown. Who are we willing to stand up for? Who we are willing to stand up to? The governor and Commissioner Campbell should ask themselves those questions again. Then they should ask why they’ve left Quakertown on the brink of losing our stand against their NJDEP.

Ron Gutkowski