Bill sought to prevent pollution through development feesPublished: Thursday, May 12, 2011, 9:10 PM Updated: Friday, May 13, 2011, 7:52 AM
By Christopher Baxter/Statehouse Bureau The Star-Ledger
BARNEGAT — A Democratic push to improve the murky waters of Barnegat Bay suffered a blow today when Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have allowed Ocean County to charge developers to pay for pollution prevention.
The bill (A2606) would have authorized, but not required, the county and its towns to assess a fee on new development to pay for improvements to malfunctioning stormwater systems that allow contaminated water to reach waterways.
In his veto message, Christie said the legislation duplicated the county’s existing stormwater management policies without addressing the bay’s underlying problems.
"Unfortunately, raising taxes and imposing new fees is the way the Legislature most commonly seeks to address our state’s issues," Christie wrote.
The veto was a victory for the county’s Republican freeholder board, which opposed the bill as an unfunded state mandate and a new tax.
"We already assess fees to new construction where it has an impact on county roads or drainage," Freeholder John Bartlett Jr. said. "Obviously, the county and freeholders are concerned about the bay, but we’re also at this point in time as concerned about costs."
Christie called protecting the bay one of his top environmental priorities in December and proposed a plan to clean it up. But environmentalists and advocates teed off on his veto, saying he talks up the bay but opposes measures to improve it.
Assembly Environment Chairman John McKeon (D-Essex) said it was a political move to protect Republicans there from constituents who would pressure them to take action under the bill. "We handed the regional governments the tools to (reduce pollution) and the governor pulled them out of their hands," McKeon said.
The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club suggested the governor had "declared war" on the bay. Director Jeff Tittel said the decision showed Christie’s preference to protect developers over the watershed.
The bill was part of a package introduced last year to reduce nitrogen flow into the bay. Nutrients such as nitrogen feed the growth of aquatic plants and algae, reducing oxygen levels for fish, choking off native species and allowing pollution-tolerant life to thrive.
Christie signed two other bills as part of the package. One established strict standards for nitrogen content in fertilizer, which often gets swept into the bay by rain. A second requires the state Department of Transportation to study stormwater basins.
The Legislature also approved a bill (A3415) setting daily limits for nutrients like nitrogen that can be allowed to enter the bay each day, but it was conditionally vetoed by Christie and has stalled. A fifth bill (A2577) calls for Ocean County to establish a pilot project allowing its utilities authority to oversee stormwater systems. It narrowly passed the Senate in March but has not been taken up by the Assembly.
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