Background - Senator Smith is working on a bill (S-919) that will incorporate language to provide better and definitive rules for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to manage public access to our beaches, parks, waterways and other facilities. Senator Smith wanted input from various stakeholders on what they wanted to include in this bill. Four separate meetings were held in Trenton with various stakeholders during Spring 2016 to develop language that Senator Smith could use for his bill. These stakeholders included environmental, business and industry, municipalities, fishing organizations, NJ Chamber of Commerce, etc. Given the diverse background of these stakeholders, Senator Smith charged this task force to develop a list of what they agreed upon and what they disagreed upon and then give it to him for his review. I attended these meetings representing the JCAA and the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance (NJOA). These meetings at times became contentious with some stakeholders demanding almost unlimited access and others wanting limited to almost no access to our state's facilities.
Conflict - In addition to the differences of opinions with the stakeholders at these meetings, the DEP sees Senator Smith's draft version of his bill as very problematic having a number of legal issues. For example, according to DEP's legal representative, Ray Cantor, this bill as currently written would allow anglers to traverse private properties to gain access to beaches and that would generate a lot of lawsuits.
Public Comment - Senator Smith held a meeting in the Municipal Building in Toms River on August 18th to receive public comment on his proposed bill. (His bill has not been brought in the Senate or Assembly for a vote and it is still in draft form). At this public comment meeting, a number of people expressed comments such as: NJ Builders - bill does not respect constitutional rights of property owners; NJ Chamber of Commerce - wants more clarity in the bill and specificity on homeland security issues; Marine Trades Associations/marinas - does not want public access for security reasons. Ray Cantor testified at length on the legal problems that the DEP sees are inherent in this bill. Senator Smith, irritated at the length of his testimony, instructed him to stop his testimony and to place all of DEP's problems/legal issues with his bill in writing and forward it to him.
Next Step - Senator Smith, after receiving this public input and others like it, may make changes to his bill and then schedule it for a public hearing in Trenton at a future date in his position as Chairman of the Senate and Environmental Committee. Date unknown at the time of this writing.
My Take of All of This - New Jersey is the most densely populated state in our country and there are so many competing interests in providing access to our beaches and other facilities. Take any New Jersey beach and there is limited space for parking purposes with so many people who want to park there, especially in the summer on any given date. In addition to this and other issues, many municipalities are not welcoming hosts to anglers who want to surf fish. At one of the four hearings I attended, I heard one municipal person, (name and town I do not wish to identify) say something to the effect, "When the Sandy Hook Recreational Park closes because of capacity, all those beachgoers come down to my town looking to be on OUR beach and that makes life miserable for us." In the way she said it, I visualized that these beachgoers are like raiding Huns, Vikings, Visigoths or other tribes riding on horses with the purpose of pillaging and rape!
On one side, you have business/industry municipalities/marinas wanting limited to no access, and the other side environmental/fishing organizations wanting improved access or totally unimpeded access. While the Public Trust Document says that our citizens have a right to public access to our beaches and other facilities, the reality is that this is a very complicated issue and achieving compromise within the various groups trying to reach resolution on it seems very problematic to me. I think that it is going to take some time to iron out all of these differences and that there will be more meetings/hearings to arrive at a bill that reflects the access we are entitled to according to the Public Trust Document.
I have tried to give you just a quick snapshot of what is going on with public access and doing more would more than fill up this entire newsletter. As this public access issue moves forward, I will keep you updated on its progress.
