NEWGREENMEDIA.TV: The Record: Christie consultant blasts Highlands Council as 'disaster' to landowners, tax-starved towns

The Record: Christie consultant blasts Highlands Council as 'disaster' to landowners, tax-starved towns

Eileen Swan and Mayor Art Ondish Highlands Council
Photo credit: NJslom.org

A report by Governor Christie’s transition team calls the Highlands Council “a disaster on multiple levels” — and recommends either drastically reducing the water-protection agency’s powers over local zoning, or eliminating it altogether.The report says the Highlands Council has added “extra layers of government bureaucracy” that have “punished landowners” in the 893,000-acre region, which supplies water to more than 5 million New Jersey residents. Those “extra layers” of environmental regulation threaten to strangle future economic development and are unnecessary because the state Department of Environmental Protection already oversees water quality, the report says.