Legislature Moves to Extend Deadline for Wastewater Management Plans
By: Henry T. Chou, Esq.
The New Jersey Senate has passed a bill known as S3156, which would extend the deadline for counties and municipalities to file wastewater management plans by at least 180 days, and potentially up to 2 years. The bill, which was passed by the Senate on January 9, 2011, will now move to the General Assembly, which is also anticipated to pass it in short order.
Under New Jersey’s Water Quality Planning Act, municipal and county wastewater management plans are legally binding documents that identify which areas can be served by public sanitary sewers and which areas can be served only by septic systems or other alternative wastewater disposal mechanisms. In regulations issued in 2008, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (“NJDEP”) declared (1) virtually all existing wastewater management plans obsolete and (2) that it would invalidate all existing wastewater management plans and prohibit new connections to existing systems unless municipalities and counties submitted revised plans within 9 months. The deadline was later administratively extended to 2009 and again to April 7, 2011.
Despite the extensions, many counties and municipalities have not finalized their revised wastewater management plans. Since there is no political appetite to upset the fragile economy by implementing a moratorium on new sewer connections, the Senate's bill aims to further extend the submission deadline.
Specifically, S3156 provides that wastewater service area designations and sewer service designations remain in effect and shall not be withdrawn for a period of at least 180 days after the enactment of the bill, and gives the NJDEP Commissioner the discretion to extend that period up to 2 years.
The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 29-7 despite objections by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which stated that a provision of the bill that allows certain sewer extensions into undeveloped areas "defies common sense" and may violate the federal Clean Water Act. The environmental lobby is opposed to the bill, but it has strong support from the development and business communities and is expected to be signed into law by the Governor once it clears the General Assembly.