A new master plan must address flooding, climate change, development, and threats to drinking water.

The Delaware & Raritan Canal is one of New Jersey’s greatest environmental treasures. It is far more than a park. It is a drinking water supply, a historic landmark, a wildlife corridor, a recreational destination, and one of the few places in New Jersey where regional land-use planning still exists. There is simply nothing else like it.

The public’s next opportunity to weigh in on a new master plan for the canal will be Tuesday, Aug. 11, from 6 to 8 p.m. at 401 E. State St. in Trenton.

The D&R Canal stretches nearly 70 miles across central New Jersey as a linear state park, while the canal itself serves as a 34-mile-long reservoir that delivers more than 100 million gallons of drinking water every day to more than 1 million New Jersey residents. Nearly 1.7 million people visit the park annually, making it one of the most heavily used parks in the state park system. The canal is also a National Historic District, and the surrounding communities contain hundreds of historic buildings and sites.

Beyond the park itself, nearly 79,000 acres of farmland, open space, county parks, local parks, and preserved lands have been permanently protected within the Commission’s jurisdiction. Portions of the canal corridor are also included in the National Park Service’s Delaware River Wild and Scenic River designation and the Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area.

Yet the blueprint protecting this remarkable resource is frozen in time. The Delaware & Raritan Canal Commission is finally updating its Master Plan for the first time in 37 years.

Think about that. When the current Master Plan was written, Ronald Reagan had just left office. Motorola had introduced the first flip phone. “Seinfeld” had just premiered, and Taylor Swift had not yet been born.

Meanwhile, climate change, warehouse sprawl, PFAS contamination, mega-development, and catastrophic flooding have completely changed New Jersey’s environmental landscape. The canal has changed. The threats have changed. The Master Plan hasn’t.

A legacy worth protecting

New Jersey was once a national leader in environmental protection and regional planning. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, residents watched forests disappear, farms become subdivisions, highways spread across open space, and pollution foul rivers and streams. The public demanded action.

The Meadowlands Act came first. Then came the groundbreaking Skylands Protection Act, which passed the Assembly but died in the Senate after its sponsor, Sen. Raymond Sisco, unexpectedly died. The State Development Plan followed, along with the creation of the Delaware & Raritan Canal Commission in 1974, through the bipartisan leadership of Sens. Ray Bateman and John Lynch.

The Pinelands Act borrowed many of the planning concepts first developed in the Skylands proposal and later helped inspire the Highlands Act. Ironically, many people believe the Highlands Act was modeled solely after the Pinelands, when in reality much of the Highlands Preservation Area closely resembles the original Skylands proposal from years earlier.

New Jersey understood something then that Trenton too often forgets today: Some places are simply too valuable to lose.

Born out of a fight against sprawl

The canal itself was dug by hand in the 1830s to transport Pennsylvania coal to New York markets. After railroads replaced canal shipping, New Jersey acquired the property in 1936.

By the early 1970s, however, a different threat had emerged: sprawl.

The proposed Somerset Freeway — part of Interstate 95 — would have bulldozed through the Sourland Mountains, crossed the canal, destroyed farms, fragmented forests, and opened central New Jersey to massive suburban development. Fortunately, citizens fought back.

The growing environmental movement, strengthened by the newly enacted Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, united local residents, transportation advocates, and organizations such as the Sierra Club to stop the project. Gov. Brendan Byrne ultimately canceled the freeway, and Congress formally killed it shortly afterward.

Creating the D&R Canal State Park and Commission in 1974 wasn’t simply about preserving history. It was about building a legal shield against destructive development.

The battles didn’t end

The next major fight was Route 92.

When the Somerset Freeway was canceled, many expected those transportation dollars to be redirected toward mass transit. Unfortunately, the highway lobby rarely lets a road die. If one highway is stopped, another quickly appears to replace it.

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority proposed Route 92, another highway that would carve through environmentally sensitive lands bordering the canal and the Millstone River.

The sales pitch was familiar: Reduce traffic. Improve mobility. Create economic growth. Sound familiar?

Too often, “traffic relief” is simply another name for opening farms, forests, and open space to developers.

We ultimately defeated Route 92 by challenging wetlands permits, exposing flawed traffic studies, promoting practical transportation alternatives, and working with federal agencies to stop key permits under the Clean Water Act.

In the end, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority abandoned the project. Route 92 became another reminder that sometimes the greenest road is the one never built.

The PennEast Pipeline fight

The PennEast Pipeline proposed a 116-mile natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania into New Jersey. Its route would have paralleled and crossed the canal corridor, carving a 150-foot-wide scar through more than 4,300 acres of preserved land while threatening drinking water supplies, forests, farms, and the canal’s historic viewshed.

The Sierra Club and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network helped launch the grassroots campaign against the pipeline in 2014.

The Canal Commission also played an important role. While federal law prevented the Commission from independently vetoing the project, its regulatory review, legal participation, and watershed protections created another significant obstacle that helped defend the canal corridor.

The lesson is simple: When citizens organize, landowners unite, local communities speak out, and state agencies such as the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the Canal Commission use every tool available, we can defeat even the biggest projects. We defeated PennEast. We preserved the valley.

More than just a park

The Commission has responsibilities unlike those of almost any other agency in New Jersey. It oversees development affecting the state park, administers regional land-use regulations across roughly 450 square miles, protects drinking water, preserves historic resources, and coordinates long-range planning across dozens of municipalities.

It does all this work with a very small staff and a tiny budget that has stayed the same since 2012. That makes the Master Plan one of the state’s most important environmental planning documents, which is exactly why it cannot simply become another recreation brochure.

Missing the biggest environmental threats

Unfortunately, the public meetings focused far too heavily on trails, access, recreation, and visitor amenities. Those are important, but where were the discussions about climate change, flooding, PFAS, water quality, stormwater, warehouses, data centers, pipeline proposals, and overdevelopment?

The biggest environmental threats facing the canal received virtually no attention.

Even worse was the meeting format itself. Instead of open discussion, residents wandered among display boards, speaking individually with consultants. There was no meaningful public dialogue, no opportunity for residents to hear each other’s concerns, and no real exchange of ideas.

I’ve seen this playbook before. Developers use it. Pipeline companies use it. Instead of bringing people together, the process keeps people apart. Instead of public debate, it becomes a series of private conversations. That isn’t public participation. It’s public relations.

I blame the consultant class, not the underfunded and understaffed Commission. The staff doesn’t have the resources to do the outreach.

The next Master Plan must look forward, not backward

The canal today faces challenges unimaginable in 1989. Climate change is producing more intense rainfall and record flooding. Warehouses and sprawling development are replacing forests and farms with pavement. PFAS, microplastics, fertilizers, and toxic runoff threaten drinking water. Flood-prone communities such as Lambertville continue to suffer repeated storm damage.

Yet the existing plan still reflects a world before climate resilience became essential. The updated Master Plan must become a blueprint for environmental protection, not simply park management.

It should strengthen stormwater standards, reduce impervious cover, eliminate redevelopment loopholes, expand green infrastructure, better protect environmentally sensitive lands, preserve scenic vistas, acquire additional open space, restore stream corridors and floodplains, encourage reforestation, and coordinate more effectively with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the New Jersey Water Supply Authority, counties, municipalities, and federal agencies.

The canal deserves Category One protections throughout its watershed. Developers should not receive a free pass simply because they label a project “redevelopment.” Growth should occur where infrastructure already exists, not by sacrificing the very landscapes that make New Jersey worth living in.

Most importantly, the Commission needs stronger enforcement authority, stable funding, and the legal resources necessary to defend the park instead of constantly relying on other agencies. A watchdog without teeth eventually becomes a lapdog.

A call to action

The Master Plan update represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity. If we get it right, the canal will be better prepared for climate change, with cleaner water, healthier ecosystems, and smarter regional planning. If we get it wrong, the next generation will inherit a park surrounded by warehouses, data centers, luxury developments, polluted runoff, and worsening floods.

The Delaware & Raritan Canal was saved because previous generations had the courage to stand up against highways, pipelines, and unchecked sprawl. Now it’s our turn.

Action plan

The Commission should:

• Make climate resilience and flood protection the foundation of the new Master Plan.
• Strengthen land-use regulations throughout the watershed to curb overdevelopment, warehouses, and data centers.
• Establish strict limits on impervious cover and eliminate redevelopment loopholes.
• Adopt stronger stormwater and water-quality standards that address PFAS, microplastics, and other emerging contaminants.
• Expand open-space acquisition and permanently preserve remaining environmentally sensitive lands before they disappear.
• Restore stream corridors, floodplains, wetlands, and forests to improve natural flood protection.
• Increase funding for park maintenance, historic preservation, and trail improvements.
• Give the Commission stronger enforcement authority, dedicated legal support, and adequate staffing so it can do important work and better defend the canal.
• Collect lease revenue, update lease rates to reflect current values, and enforce and fine encroachments on parkland to provide a steady source of funding.
• Improve coordination among state, county, local, and federal agencies to ensure one unified strategy for protecting the watershed.
• Ensure genuine public participation by holding real public hearings with open dialogue, questions, and debate, not consultant-led information sessions.

The Delaware & Raritan Canal has survived nearly two centuries because people fought for it. The next Master Plan should honor that legacy, not just document it. The canal isn’t simply part of New Jersey’s history. It is essential to New Jersey’s future.

What the public can do

The public still has an opportunity to shape the Master Plan, but only if people participate.

Attend one of the remaining public meetings. Speak up. Demand that the Master Plan focus on climate change, flooding, drinking water protection, open-space preservation, and stronger land-use regulations, not just recreation.

Submit written comments if you cannot attend. Encourage your environmental commission, planning board, governing body, watershed association, land trust, and local environmental groups to submit comments as well. The more people who participate, the harder it becomes for the Commission to ignore these concerns.

Most importantly, don’t let this become another planning document that sits on a shelf for another 37 years. This Master Plan will influence decisions affecting the canal and its watershed for decades. Future generations will either thank us for protecting this remarkable resource or wonder why we stood by while it slipped away.

Upcoming public meetings include:

• Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s public hearing room, 401 E. State St., Trenton.
• Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Lawrence Township Library headquarters branch, 2751 Brunswick Pike, Lawrence Township.

If you cannot attend, submit comments through the Delaware & Raritan Canal Commission Master Plan public comment portal. Democracy only works when people show up, and protecting the D&R Canal is too important to leave to consultants.