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The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) wants to drastically change the state’s land-use regulations. Impacting both residential and commercial property, the changes—called the Resilient Environment And Landscape (REAL) rules, part of DEP’s Protecting Against Climate Threats (PACT) initiative—will severely limit the rights of New Jersey property owners and restrict economic growth.

The imPACT of REAL

PACT Will Make Achieving Policy Goals Difficult

Improving infrastructure & addressing housing and redevelopment goals will be nearly impossible.

PACT Will Have Huge Residential Impacts

From property values to property taxes, PACT will have huge local implications.

PACT Will Stop Economic Development

PACT will mean fewer Jobs, increased costs and housing prices, and loss of home rule.

Separating 10 PACT Myths From Facts

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) wants to drastically change the state’s land-use regulations. Impacting both residential and commercial property, the changes—called the Resilient Environment And Landscape (REAL) rules, part of DEP’s Protecting Against Climate Threats (PACT) initiative—will severely limit the rights of New Jersey property owners and restrict economic growth.

Fact: REAL does not allow permanent enclosures to be built below the proposed Coastal Adjusted Flood Elevation in VE zones or AE zones. In areas where height restrictions also apply, this could mean two story homes become single story once they are raised. REAL also creates yet to be designated “Critical Environmental Sites” where lot coverage is limited to 3%!

Fact: The REAL rules apply to “substantial improvements” to existing structures. This means redevelopment projects or home renovations can trigger these rules. Land values are greatly affected by their development and redevelopment potential.

Fact: DEP’s projections show there is a 17% chance of sea level rise reaching 5.1 feet by 2100. It is 83% more likely, according to DEP, that sea level rise is less than 5.1ft by 2100. Other agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agree that less than 5.1 feet is more likely.

DEP’s rulemaking also applies the 100-year storm, which is defined as a storm that has a 1% chance of occurring any year, on top of its sea level rise protection. This means DEP is proposing to regulate land that has a 0.17% chance of being impacted.

Fact: DEP’s Costal Flood Hazard Area and proposed “Climate Adjusted Flood Hazard Area” extend up estuaries and bays, meaning even cities like Hackensack and Camden are subject to the new rules.

Fact: Overestimating risk has a tremendous downside

Fact: The DEP has not established any proof that this is the case. No other state has proposed these draconian steps.

Fact: The REAL rule proposal will repeal existing Permits-by-Rule 1, 2, 6, and 7, whereby no permit application submission was previously required, for residential and commercial development in limited circumstances. NJDEP will now require that these same activities be authorized by new General-Permits-by-Certification 5, 6, 7 and 8 for which permit application documents must be prepared, made available for inspection, and an application be submitted to NJDEP, including subjective requirements for alternatives analysis. This will turn basic permits that have been essentially automatically approved into individual permits, subject to staff review and show down all approvals statewide.

Fact: It is not financially, legally or technically feasible to build up (in some cases 12 feet) properties to comply with all the unknowns related to fill material and trucking regulations (A901/Dirty Dirt, Proposed GWQS for soil, etc).

Fact: While DEP knows there are open questions of what constitutes “dry access” for development, especially those that include residential components, it failed to address this critical issue in the proposal. Remember, raising your building is not enough, you may have to raise unspecified distances of roadways.

Fact: The PACT Rule was based on a report not meant to be used for land use policymaking. That is because projections are not science and the NJDEP chose the projections that backed into its policy view. Projections rely on models are human created equations and human-decided data inputs and other parameters.

You Can Make Your Voice Heard On PACT

Click the button to contact the DEP and let them know how you feel about the REAL impacts that PACT will have on our families and communities across the Garden State.

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