County presenter warns DEP's proposed rule would add 5 feet to coastal flood maps, residents fear insurance and economic fallout

A county-sponsored consultant told Lower Township council and nearly 100 residents that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's proposed "Resilient Environments and Landscapes" (REaL) rule would apply a 2100 planning horizon and a conservative 5-foot sea-level-rise projection to coastal regulations, creating a new inundation risk zone and increasing FEMA flood-hazard elevations by five feet.

The consultant, representing L Max Consultant Group, said the change would shift mean higher high water inland by five feet and add five feet to mapped 100-year flood elevations, moving many finished-floor elevation requirements upward. He described the proposal as sweeping: it would apply to new development, redevelopment and renovations that meet DEP's "substantial improvement" threshold (work exceeding 50% of a property's market value).

The rule, the presenter said, follows Governor's Executive Order 100 and relies on analyses from a Science and Technology Advisory Panel convened by Rutgers University; DEP is expected to publish the proposal in the New Jersey Register and open a 90-day comment period and multiple public hearings after publication.

Residents at the meeting said the changes would have immediate local consequences. "This will affect everyone's home," said a longtime Villas resident who asked to be identified by name in the public record, describing sudden nonrenewals and sharply higher premiums from private insurers. Several speakers asked whether the rule would force homeowners to raise their finished floors to retain flood insurance; the presenter replied that DEP intends that existing permitted projects and legacy permits remain protected and that DEP's rule would not in itself compel homeowners to elevate existing finished floors, but he said he could not predict how private insurers would respond.

Local officials and residents pressed for more transparency on the science and for an economic-impact analysis. "We need to see the evidence that sea level is going to rise 5 feet," one resident said; the presenter replied that the Rutgers/STAP materials and the county's analyses are, or will be, made available online and via county and municipal channels once the proposal is published. He noted DEP used the Rutgers panel because it focused on New Jersey-specific conditions.

The presenter also described required permitting changes for sites in the inundation risk zone: developers would have to perform on-site alternatives analyses, full impact assessments and produce "risk acknowledgement" documents to be recorded with property records to notify future buyers of elevated inundation risk.

Lower Township-specific maps shown at the meeting indicated a substantial increase in flood-zone acreage: the presenter said roughly 7,253 acres are currently in the township's flood zone and that the proposed approach would expand that to about 11,546 acres (about 67% of township land), a roughly 25 percentage-point increase in land designated as flood hazard.

Councilmembers and county officials encouraged residents to file comments during the formal public-comment period and to contact state officials about insurance and socioeconomic impacts. Council said it would help publish hearing dates and contact information for comment submissions on municipal channels.

The DEP proposal remains at the rule-proposal stage: publication in the New Jersey Register would start the public-comment period and the formal record. The presenter and council encouraged residents to submit written comments during the 90-day window; DEP will review comments and respond before any adoption, which by statute must occur within one year of publication or require a re-proposal.