MTR 264, New Jersey DOT Road Expansion Pollutes the Delaware

Mobilizing the Region
Issue 264 April 7, 2000

New Jersey DOT Road Expansion Pollutes the Delaware

All was not quiet on Trenton's Delaware River waterfront this week as the Army Corps of Engineers (Phila. District) halted the NJ Dept. of Transportation Route 29 construction project because DOT violated permit conditions. The intrusive highway is being built in the open waters of the Delaware, in the path of the migrating shad and Atlantic sturgeon who spawn upriver, just as the Lambertville shadfest is about to get underway. The shadfest has made Lambertville area a large tourist attraction every spring. DOT is only allowed to work in the river from Dec. 1 to March 14 to avoid the running shad. But the permit was inexplicably extended, and DOT's sloppy practices caused silt to cloud the channel.

"It shows the folly of constructing highways along waterfronts," Tri-State Campaign director Janine Bauer told the Trenton Times.

Environmentalists, including the Delaware Riverkeeper, citizens' groups and Pennsylvania officials had warned New Jersey regulators in 1998 that Rte. 29's construction could not proceed without massive habitat destruction, and a NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection biologist who so testified at a Tidelands Resource Council hearing was barred from testifying at a later hearing by his bosses. The Corps has fined DOT $25,000, a pittance compared to DOT's annual budget and the harm to the community the $94 million project has already caused.

The environmental violation will delay the project's completion, causing even more traffic disruption in the Trenton area than the project was slated to result in already. The Route 29 project was spotlighted last fall in a national report by the Surface Transportation Policy Project that found that motorists can lose more time in road construction delays than they will save in years of driving on the newly "improved" road. A case study in the paper showed that traffic delays stemming from Route 29 construction will be so long and ongoing that it will take ten years for drivers to make up the time lost and actually benefit from the project.

Tri-State's lawsuit over the tidelands permit DEP issued to NJ DOT to construct Route 29 permit is pending in the state appeals court. The case should be argued soon.