BY JEFF TITTEL

COMMENTARY

On Thursday, the Department of Environmental Protections announced it wants residents throughout New Jersey to begin conserving water, however they have done nothing to combat the issue themselves. Since we had below average precipitation thus far this year it was inevitable that water conservation advisory was going to be implemented. The New Jersey Sierra Club believes the DEP needs a much more proactive system to deal with droughts especially with the possibility of this dry weather pattern continuing through the summer.

We have a system that’s broken like an old water pipe and we believe the DEP must get serious on its efforts to deal with drought. For far too long there has been a drought of action and a deficit of planning.

First, we need to change the indicators for a drought to include dying crops, forest fire alerts, low ground water levels, and low stream flows. We believe we also need to look at ecological flows in streams and rivers as well as fisheries and dilutions from sewer plants. Currently, our system is based on false indicators. The only indicator the DEP presently uses to assess drought is low reservoir levels.