Our View

Time to fight gov.’s ‘battle against sprawl’ in Brick

Whatever your opinion is of Gov. James McGreevey, his rousing speech at the Metedeconk River Yacht Club last week showed that his fingers were firmly applied to the pulse of Brick and other Shore communities.

At a press conference to announce the end of the state’s emergency drought conditions and a proposal for Category One (C1) protection for the Metedeconk River, the governor talked tough about the hassles and environmental dangers of overdevelopment.

He referred to the problem in terms such as "the battle against sprawl" several times and urged residents, environmental activists and elected leaders to rise up and join the fight.

McGreevey even offered a weapon for that battle in the form of the C1 regulations.

But the jury is still out on whether this, for Brick, is an environmental cannon or just another impotent paper popgun.

According to McGreevey and Bradley Campbell, state Department of Environmental Protection commissioner, C1 regulations ensure that the river system would be protected from any discharges that produce a measurable change in water quality.

Stormwater runoff would have to be as clean or cleaner than the river it drains into. Buffers would be increased between developments and the river.

Campbell and McGreevey said the odds would not favor a waterfront application that entails an existing structure being torn down and replaced on the same site.

But that is exactly what is being proposed in the Home Depot application for the vacant Foodtown building at the intersection of Route 70 and Brick Boulevard.

Even though the building seems like a poster example of how these C1 regulations should be used, with its position just steps from the banks of Forge Pond, some officials doubt that the governor’s measures can make a major difference in this case.

This should not sit well for Brick’s public officials, who often urge other local towns to curb similar waterfront developments.

The Home Depot application will get its first hearing on Jan. 22.

If it proceeds quickly, the anticipated February public hearings and subsequent enactment of the C1 protections, whatever their effects, will be too late anyway.

The administration of Mayor Joseph Scarpelli’s doctrine has long been that development must be thwarted along the river’s banks and tributaries to protect the drinking water supplies of 100,000 area residents.

Brick officials have purchased riverfront lands as open space to accomplish that and have also criticized other municipalities for allowing developments deemed as harmful.

But Brick’s leaders can’t credibly point the finger at, say, Jackson Township for entertaining Mitch Leigh’s ambitious Towne Center application without leading through their own actions.

If the township’s leaders mean what they say, the governor’s so-called battle against overdevelopment needs to be fought in Town Hall next week.