VICTORY! Hackensack Meadowlands Protected
New York/New Jersey Baykeeper and Hackensack Riverkeeper Save The Empire Tract: Crown Jewel of New Jersey Urban Wetlands
By Andy Willner and Glen Scherer
Photos by Gene Nieminen/USFS
One of the greatest victories for urban land conservation in U.S. history was clinched on March 25, 2005, when the 587-acre Empire Tract of the New Jersey Meadowlands was transferred from private hands to the people of New Jersey – finally ceded by the Mills Corporation to the Meadowlands Conservation Trust. The tract had been slated to become the biggest mall east of the Mississippi River. Now it lies at the heart of an 8,400-acre urban wildlife preserve.

“This is the victory we’ve been working toward for fifteen years,” says NY/NJ Baykeeper Andy Willner. “The Empire Tract is the last piece of the puzzle, the jewel in the crown that concludes a journey that started for me in 1990.” It is a journey that began with practically no one believing that the Meadowlands could or should be saved, and ended with virtually everyone in agreement that it must be saved.

The Mills development company yielded thanks to one of the most successful urban wetlands preservation campaigns ever. Relentless grassroots pressure from a massive and diverse alliance that came to include dozens of environmental and community groups, city and county officials, U.S. Congressmen, two New Jersey governors, and hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents.

The movement, launched by the NY/NJ Baykeeper in 1990, reversed an almost 400-year trend of filling and destroying urban wetlands on the Hackensack River. “People have stopped seeing this as a ‘mosquito infested swamp’ or ‘wasteland’, and started seeing it as an invaluable natural resource, a wildlife preserve located within a short drive of fifteen million citizens,” says Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic attorney Susan Kraham.” The day has even come where the Meadowlands is being seen with pride as a prime ecotourism destination.”

The First Fight of a Long Year Campaign
The year was 1986 and the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission – a state regulatory body operating largely beyond the public eye – was intent on streamlining a path to quick development in the Hackensack Meadowlands. That meant destroying wetlands, lots of wetlands.

To legitimize their mission, the Development Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers worked to create a Special Area Management Plan – a development plan that called for the filling of up to 1,600 acres of prime marsh, destroying vast wetland habitat for migratory birds and spawning fish. The plan ignored viable possibilities for the redevelopment of the region’s many derelict industrial sites.

The plan was “contrary to common sense,” recalls Willner who first encountered the plan at a meeting of the Development Commission in 1990, at the time he had just become the Estuary’s Baykeeper. “I didn’t know what an environmental impact statement was,” he recalls, “But I knew that it all sounded fishy: that they were going to fill wetlands while there were obviously plenty of opportunities to redevelop in other places.”

As Willner got more deeply involved, it became clear that the Development Commission’s plan was wired to allow a few well-connected developers to build in the wetland. Sounding the alarm, Baykeeper joined with early allies including New Jersey Audubon Society, and lawyers Billy Cahill and Ed Lloyd of the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic.

“I remember my first meeting with the Development Commission in 1993,” says NY/NJ Baykeeper Conservation Director Greg Remaud. “There we were: the Baykeeper and a handful of advocates, maybe five or six of us in a big auditorium. And all grouped together up front were a lot of suits: lawyers, officials, developers, and the Meadowlands Development Commission. They were smiling, happy, and ready to destroy the Meadowlands. They kept telling us that, according to their plan, the only way to save the Meadowlands was to fill wetlands. Then Andy Willner stood up in his clogs, and tore them apart. He was logical, articulate and completely fearless in the face of a better organized, better funded and better dressed coalition of developers and government officials.”

By 1995, environmental advocates had taken their arguments against the development plan to the public and the people of New Jersey rallied behind them: The Army Corps and the Development Commission received more than 1,800 negative comments to a draft environmental impact statement on their plan. It was an unexpected firestorm of criticism. Not only did citizens and many mayors from the fourteen Meadowlands municipalities oppose the plan, but so did the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Strong ally U.S. Congressman Steve Rothman proposed “drawing a thick black line” of preservation around all the last Meadowlands wetlands.

Meadowlands Mills: The Mall that Never Was
In 1993, Captain Bill Sheehan, who in 1997 would become the Hackensack Riverkeeper, joined the fray as a full partner, garnering names for petitions and rallying public understanding and support of the effort to protect the Meadowlands. Most importantly, he began his eco-tour program that would ultimately get more than 5,000 people out into the Marsh.

When in 1996, the Mills Corporation of Virginia, builder of some of America’s most pretentious mega-malls, announced their plans to build the Mills Meadowlands Mall on the Empire Tract, 587 acres of prime wetland at the heart of the Meadowlands, Sheehan, Willner and the rest of the Meadowlands Partnership were ready.

They were big, rich, and over-confident. They had used money and power to bulldoze environmentalists, building their malls on wetlands in the Florida Everglades and outside Houston, Texas. “We said, ‘Look, there are alternatives to building in wetlands, and we named ten different places, all in the market area where they could build,” remembers Willner. “But this guy from Mills says to us, ‘We won’t move any closer to Newark because those people don’t shop and they won’t work.’” Willner’s resolve was doubled.

What ensued was a David and Goliath battle, a series of contentious public meetings with all the twists-and-turns of a highly charged courtroom drama. Then, unexpectedly, Mills announced that it had temporarily withdrawn their application.

But Mills had not given up – they had only shifted their strategy. Through a well-funded misinformation campaign they found allies in some labor unions to participate in the next hearing. “They bused these construction workers to the meetings,” recalls Captain Bill. “Outside they were milling around and looking threatening.” Inside Mills orchestrated the event as well, but things did not go according to plan. “They had these guys reading from slips of paper saying the same thing over-and-over why Mills should get their permit, but some guys didn’t use the paper. One literally asked the [Army Corps] Colonel to have us taken out in chains because we were the enemy of the state and worse than terrorists. That was us, worse than terrorists.”

In one hearing, Willner gathered all of the corporation’s glitzy promotional graphics together in a PowerPoint presentation and used Mills’ own images to prove the viability of the alternative sites. Captain Bill produced “Phragmites and you, perfect together” tee shirts and outfitted an auditorium full of Meadowlands supporters with them. In time, union support dwindled, as construction workers realized they would have the same jobs no matter where the mall was built.

As public opposition to the regional development plan stiffened, even the embattled Development Commission staff began to recognize their failure to listen to public opinion. “The one thing we did not do [in the 90’s] was reach out to our stakeholders: the environmental groups, the municipalities, John and Judy Q. Citizen, mayors, freeholders, and state legislators,” agrees Bob Ceberio, Development Commission staffer who would eventually take over as Executive Director and help reshape the agency’s mission and policies in a positive way. Back then, “we were obviously closely aligned to part of the business community, and the mindset of the Commission for the longest time was that of isolation.”

By 2000, NY/NJ Baykeeper, Hackensack Riverkeeper and their partners had brought progress on the regional development plan to a standstill. As New Jersey’s Republican Governor Christy Whitman departed for Washington to run the US EPA, the political climate and leadership at the Development Commission (now renamed the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission) changed radically. In March 2001, acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco came out in favor of Meadowlands preservation. Then on January 23, 2002, the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission withdrew its support for the proposed development plan. The Special Area Management Plan to pave the Meadowlands was officially dead.

Though the war was won, there was still one battle left: the Mills Mall development was still on the table. The key to the fight was forcing the Mills Corporation and the Army Corps of Engineers to look seriously at alternative sites for the project – and that happened when Mills and state officials started talking together about the redevelopment of the Continental Airlines arena, former home of the New Jersey Nets. With the law, the public, and eventually the Governor of New Jersey firmly in favor of preserving the Meadowlands, Mills eventually came to understand that their model of developing on wetlands was simply not going to happen in New Jersey.

Cementing a Permanent Plan to Preserve the Meadowlands
Those environmental advocates who for so long fought an out-of-control political decision-making process now had to design their own plan for the Meadowlands. Working with the now-friendlier Meadowlands Commission they designed a new regional protection plan that would benefit Meadowlands communities, the environment and economy.

Environmentalists, municipalities, and businesses worked through the new plan chapter by chapter offering input and suggesting changes. “The new master plan became a true blend across the board for all of our stakeholders,” says Ceberio. “It dealt with quality of life issues, the environment, preservation, parks, and we showed the business community that in fact, from the economic development side, we could do equal-to or better-than was proposed... under the development plan, without filling in wetlands.”

On March 25, 2005, Mills Corporation transferred title of the 587 acres of the Empire Tract permanently into public hands. At the same time Mills turned over its first of 75 annual $100,000 payments to help pay for the preservation of the Meadowlands. After investing $100 million to develop the Empire Tract – money spent on lawyers, scientists, public relations and even a barbeque at nearby Giants Stadium to rally support for their project – even Mills officials privately agreed that because they were forced to consider an alterative site, “we’re going to have a better project.”

What is a wetland?
Wetlands are a living, breathing part of the river, low-lying land that is flowed by the tide, absorbing water and producing and supporting wildlife on a massive scale.

Garden State Trust
On March 12, 1997, New Jersey Assembly Majority Leader Paul DiGaetano introduced legislation modeled directly on NY/NJ Baykeeper’s plan to create a public Meadowlands Conservation Trust. Ownership of 8,400 acres of Meadowlands will eventually be turned over to this public land trust for perpetual protection on the public’s behalf. “It is my sincere hope that through this legislation, a significant piece of our neighborhood will continue to remain in its pristine state,” DiGaetano said. “We should remember first and foremost that New Jersey is the ‘Garden State,’ not the ‘Concrete State.’”

Why fill a wetland?
The most valuable shoreline real estate has historically been viewed as wasteland. The shoreline of Manhattan and many other cities were formerly the transition area between dry land and the waters of the neighboring river or lake. Dumping dirt into a wetland is one way to raise the level of the surface above the water table to make dry land. Under the Clean Water Act, a certain amount of this “filling” of wetlands is allowed. The US Army Corps of Engineers, under the supervision of the US EPA, can issue permits to fill wetlands after a review of the impacts and alternatives.