What's New

Gov. Corzine cannot afford to ignore the rampant pace of over-development across the state. Environment New Jersey is advocating that Gov. Corzine urge the Department of Environmental Protection to revise and officially propose the much-delayed protections for critical habitat lands across the state. The rules have received tremendous opposition from developers who don’t want to see any hurdles to building across the state. Environment New Jersey is also urging Gov. Corzine to replenish rapidly dwindling Green Acres open space funding since the state is rejecting new open space applications.

How You Can Help

Ask the Governor to adopt the ‘critical habitat rules’ which would protect New Jersey’s most ecologically rich open spaces from development.

Brief Summary

To the tune of over 40 acres a day, New Jersey is losing the green places in our towns that provide wildlife habitat, stop run-off pollution from flowing into our waterways and put the Garden in Garden State. Rutgers University predicts that the state will reach full “build-out”—the day we’ll run out of land—in 30 years. One of the state’s biggest developers—Bob Toll of Toll Brothers—thinks that it will occur even faster—in the next 15 years.

What's the result of that freedom? The developers build without a regard to what places should and shouldn't be developed, and at unsustainable rates. As a result, New Jersey has lost a lot of its natural beauty and far too much of its open space. Today, 40 percent of the state's land area is developed, making New Jersey the most densely developed state in the nation and even more densely populated than India and Japan!

Every year, developers and builders destroy another 18,000 acres of open space—that's a land area two times the size of Jersey City, one of the state's largest cities. At that rate, according to Rutgers University, in 40 years the entire state will be as developed as Hudson County.

Outdoor recreation and green spaces are a critical part of life in New Jersey, but we are at risk of losing that because of developers.