Assembly committee hears widespread concerns about warehouse sprawl, public-safety and planning gaps

Members of the State Assembly Public Safety and Preparedness Committee held an hours-long hearing on warehouse development across New Jersey and heard repeated appeals from municipal officials, senior residents, planning advocates and first responders for stronger local planning tools and public-safety safeguards.

The discussion centered on cumulative impacts: traffic congestion, truck-related air pollution, stormwater runoff, noise and emergency-response challenges posed by clustering of large distribution facilities adjacent to schools, senior housing and neighborhoods. Speakers urged legislation to give towns funding and authority to update master plans and to require broader impact studies for applicants.

Why it matters: witnesses said existing municipal and state processes are not keeping pace with a post‑COVID rise in e-commerce distribution, producing concentrated local harms even where state law and zoning technically allow warehouses. Several speakers described fatalities, long EMS response times, repeated traffic incidents and large fires that strained local resources.

Mayor Philip Kramer of Franklin Township told the committee that his town consolidated industrial zoning into a Business and Industrial (BI) zone in 2020 and then saw far more warehouse applications than expected: “When we created the BI Zone, I anticipated roughly 25 warehouses to come in 10…