Ocean City’s opposition to the Shore Protection Rule proposed by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is understandable if the reality were endangered shorebirds destroying the resort’s summer tourist season.
That fear is like seeing a flock of birds in the sky and imagining they’re the vanguard in some Alfred Hitchcock scenario.
It is fair to be concerned about the ramifications of government regulations. Government agency overreach is a longstanding popular concept in conservative circles. It has been gaining steam fast, with our current U.S. Supreme Court taking up cases aiming directly at agencies putting up their own regulations.
Although regulations are what have made our air and water cleaner, made food and vehicles safer and protect consumers in so many ways — just to name a few aspects — they also can be onerous and burdensome on barrier islands. Just ask city officials how involved it is to get permission to put the figurative shovel in the muck to remove sediment in the back bay so boats don’t bottom out.
The exception seems to be if you’re a company proposing to spend a few billion bucks on an offshore wind farm and thousands of pages of federal review surprisingly reveal a couple hundred massive wind turbines plunked into the ocean floor won’t have important adverse effects on the environment or sea life.
But I digress.
The Shore Protection Rule hasn’t even been “formally” proposed yet; the NJDEP has been informing stakeholders about the proposed rule. (If you want to get added to the email list to be notified when the public comment period opens, send an email to nongame@dep.nj.gov.)
The rule is meant to protect endangered species such as red knots and piping plover. Before proposing a restriction on a property, the NJDEP’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program would have to identify three conditions:
— An endangered species is currently using or anticipated to use tidal waters and/or adjacent shoreline;
— That area must be demonstrated as a critical habitat area for the species; and
— Existing or anticipated injurious uses would result in harm, a form of “take” prohibited under the Endangered and Nongame Species Conservation Act.
Fish and Wildlife would then determine the minimal area necessary for protection and that the restrictions could recur as needed annually or start and stop multiple times.
Landowners, including municipalities, can appeal restrictions.
At the March 14 Ocean City Council meeting, the resort’s business administrator, George Savastano, called the rule “government overreach.”
Before council agreed and voted unanimously to approve a resolution stating the resort’s opposition, Savastano argued the rule would add a duplicate layer of restrictions on municipalities atop the regulations already in place, and give NJDEP Fish and Wildlife sole discretion to enact restrictions to protect endangered species such as shorebirds and sea turtles.
Savastano also echoed what was in the resolution, asserting the Shore Protection Rule could put life and safety at risk by limiting emergency response from police, fire and beach patrol personnel because of restrictions put in place to protect endangered species.
Letting a person potentially drown because rescuers had to be more concerned with saving a bird or a turtle? That seems like government overreaction to the potential of government overreach.
So I reached out to the NJDEP.
I asked Lawrence Hajna, press director for the NJDEP, if that last part about the Shore Protection Rule hampering emergency response was accurate.
“Rescues and other emergencies of a similar nature will always take precedence,” he said. “Those that operate under beach management plans know that emergencies are clearly exempted from all restrictions and the same will be true for the Shore Protection Rule.”
Ocean City already operates under a beach management plan, so much of what the NJDEP is considering is already being implemented here.
Savastano and other city officials know that, because the resort took part in an NJDEP informational meeting about the rule back in September and was told that very thing.
A notable difference, Hajna pointed out, envisions a potential seasonal restriction for migrating shorebirds and beach-nesting birds that forage in the intertidal zone. The upper beach zone where nests are built are already afforded protections such as being roped off, but this could extend that protected area to where the birds feed closer to the water.
Last summer the center of Ocean City had a pair of nesting piping plover and NJDEP Fish and Wildlife protected a small area around their nest high on the beach. Based on the Shore Protection Rule, more beach could have been protected because those incredibly tiny chicks had to run to feed.
In the future, should another nesting pair stake a claim on a central Ocean City beach, more area could be roped off. It is easy to live with a roped-off nest at the top of the beach, but that proposal, if it becomes a rule, could affect a much bigger area, so there is reason for some concern about losing valuable real estate where tourists relax during the season. However, the NJDEP told the city it shouldn’t be worried about shutting down whole beaches.
When looking at the overall impact of the Shore Protection Rule, consider this: it is about endangered species.
That piping plover nest was the first in that area in a dozen years and none of the chicks that hatched survived. In fact it was a bad year for piping plover up and down the Jersey shore, meaning the species continues to struggle.
One new nest? Not exactly an invasion.
David Nahan is editor and publisher of the Ocean City Sentinel, Upper Township Sentinel and The Sentinel of Somers Point, Linwood and Northfield.