New Jersey already loses 16,000 acres of open space to development each year. Over half the land lost consists of environmentally sensitive forests, wetlands and wildlife habitat.

And now these lands face a new threat: Developers and their allied interests have formed a political campaign to open up New Jersey’s most ecologically rich open spaces to development.

The so-called “Smart Growth Economic Developers Council,” made up of the New Jersey Builders Association, the New Jersey Association of Realtors, the Business & Industry Association and others, want to unravel existing protections and prevent future preservation efforts from inhibiting their plans to build on New Jersey’s most special landscapes.  This developer’s alliance has convinced legislators to introduce three bills.  Two passed a Senate committee on Dec. 14, and are expected to be voted on in Assembly committees early next year.

Environment New Jersey and a large alliance of environmental groups are working to convince the New Jersey Legislature and the governor  to reject these bills.
 

New Jersey’s most powerful lobby, the developers, are making progress in the legislature with bills that open up our most environmentally sensitive lands to development.

Want to do more? Click here to tell your state legislators to oppose the developers’ plan to open up New Jersey’s most environmentally rich open spaces.  

We not only love New Jersey’s open spaces, we depend on them — resilient watershed ecosystems mean healthy drinking water for our families, and healthy wetlands protect our towns from storms and flooding. But the places that we love and rely on are facing a big threat.

Developers and their allies are campaigning aggressively to open up New Jersey’s richest and most vulnerable lands to unrestricted development. They not only want to block much-needed future protections and roll back existing rules, but also to install a high-ranking Development Czar with close ties to business who has the authority to bypass and overrule the state's most fundamental environmental regulations.

One thing that’s clear — developers already have too much influence over state and local decision-making. Remember the 44 state and local officials caught up in the corruption bust last summer? Many of them had unscrupulous business dealings with developers.

It’s up to us to stand up for the places we love and stop developers from taking the green out of the Garden State. New Jersey’s open spaces deserve more protection, not less.