Through the 19th to early 20th centuries, New Jersey’s urban centers were experiencing the largest sustained population growth in recorded global history. For 100 years, beginning with the first census records in 1820, Newark alone recorded an average annual population increase of over 45%. The stress so many people put upon Newark’s sole source of water, the Passaic River, combined with rampant deforestation and pollution caused by hundreds of mines, furnaces and factories upstream of the city, was disastrous. By 1890, Newark was considered “the nation’s unhealthiest city” with some of the highest death rates in the country for the waterborne illnesses of cholera, scarlet fever, and typhoid. To solve this catastrophe, Newark sought out and purchased land in New Jersey’s “hinterlands” to build a number of reservoirs to ensure a clean source of water. Jersey City followed suit, building for two reservoirs in the region.

Today, Newark and Jersey City, as well as the surrounding towns they supply, receive 100% of their water from the Highlands region. 70% of New Jersey’s residents receive some or all of their water from the Highlands. The fact that the headwaters for most of northern New Jersey’s major river systems are in the Highlands was not lost on politicians on both sides of the aisle in 2004, when they passed the Highlands Water Protection & Planning Act. The Act established 859,000 acres in the Highlands as a region where development and impacts to forests and wetlands should be limited necessary to protect the state’s water supply.

The Act established a limited growth region in New Jersey comparable in size to the Catskills in New York, which were set aside over 100 years ago as “forever wild”. Today, New York City has some of the best quality and most reliable supply of water in the country because the state had the foresight and political will to protect the forests that buffer and protect the City’s water supply. New Jersey’s Highlands is similar in size and purpose to the Catskills, yet its forests enjoy no similar protections. The Highlands Council is supposed to be the coordinating agency among the governmental, quasi-governmental and private water purveyors operating out of the Highlands with a fraction of New York City’s budget and little authority.In 2022, as part of the Forest protection and enhancement goal established as part of the Regional Master Plan (RMP), the Council began developing a set of forestry Best Management Practices (BMPs), which would ensure that forestry practices would be consistent with the water and forest protection goals of the RMP. Extensive public stakeholdering was launched to solicit input on the proposed BMPs, concluding in December 2022. Shortly after, the NJDEP directed the Council to halt any further development of the BMPs until the DEP could comment of the BMPs. That was two years ago.

Meanwhile the Highlands Council has been prevented from adopting the BMPs as updates to the RMP. We have repeatedly urged the DEP to allow the Highlands Council to move forward by releasing the BMPs. The primary objective of the BMPs are to ensure that forest management in the Highlands prioritize water resource protection, which may be at odds with DEPs logging-as-management program. We urge the DEP to allow the Highlands Council to fulfill the Council’s Highlands Act-driven mandate to protect New Jersey’s largest source of water.