New Jersey Highlands Council: Regional Planning Authority

The New Jersey Highlands Council is a state-created regional planning body with statutory authority over a defined upland corridor in the northwestern portion of the state. Established under the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act (N.J.S.A. 13:20-1 et seq.), the Council coordinates land use, environmental protection, and infrastructure decisions across a 1,343-square-mile planning region. Its decisions directly affect municipal zoning, development approvals, and resource allocation for communities within the Highlands boundary.

Definition and scope

The Highlands Council is a 15-member body composed of representatives appointed by the Governor, the Senate President, and the Assembly Speaker, along with ex officio members from state departments including the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Department of Agriculture. The Council's jurisdiction is defined by the Highlands Region, a legislatively drawn boundary covering portions of 7 counties — Bergen, Hunterdon, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, and Warren — and encompassing 88 municipalities.

The region is divided into two distinct zones:

  1. Preservation Area — approximately 430 square miles subject to the most stringent environmental restrictions. Development activity is tightly constrained by state statute, and conformance with the Regional Master Plan is mandatory for municipalities in this zone.
  2. Planning Area — approximately 913 square miles where municipal conformance with the Regional Master Plan is voluntary, though financial and regulatory incentives are offered to encourage participation.

The primary statutory purpose is the protection of water resources. The Highlands Region supplies drinking water to roughly 2.3 million New Jersey residents (Highlands Council, Regional Master Plan, 2008), making aquifer recharge and watershed integrity central to all planning decisions.

Scope limitations: The Highlands Council's authority does not extend to municipalities outside the legislatively defined Highlands boundary. Counties with no Highlands-designated municipalities — including Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Essex, Gloucester, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Salem, and Union — fall entirely outside this Council's jurisdiction. Federal lands within the Highlands boundary are subject to federal environmental law and are not governed by Council determinations.

How it works

The Council's primary operational instrument is the Regional Master Plan (RMP), adopted in 2008. The RMP establishes land use designations, resource protection standards, build-out analyses, and policies governing septic density, impervious surface limits, and water budget calculations for the entire Highlands Region.

Municipal and county governments that choose to conform to the RMP must submit a Petition for Plan Conformance. The Council reviews petitions through a structured process:

  1. Completeness review — Staff determines whether the submission includes required elements including a master plan amendment, ordinance updates, and a resource assessment.
  2. Technical review — Council staff and its technical advisory committee assess alignment with RMP goals and standards across 17 defined planning modules.
  3. Public hearing — A formal hearing is held before the full Council.
  4. Conformance determination — The Council votes on either conditional or full conformance status.

Municipalities achieving conformance status gain access to Highlands Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) programs, priority funding under state infrastructure programs, and streamlined permitting through the NJDEP Highlands permitting rules (N.J.A.C. 7:38).

The Council coordinates directly with New Jersey regional planning structures and maintains data layers through its own geographic information system, used in project-level reviews and waiver determinations.

Common scenarios

Development application reviews: Property owners and developers seeking permits for regulated activities in the Preservation Area must demonstrate compliance with the Highlands Act. The NJDEP administers permits under N.J.A.C. 7:38, and the Council provides consistency determinations in certain cases.

Waiver requests: The Highlands Act authorizes the Council to grant waivers from RMP standards in defined circumstances — including hardship, pre-existing development patterns, and brownfield redevelopment. Each waiver category has specific eligibility criteria and is subject to public notice.

TDR transactions: Landowners in designated Sending Zones may sever development rights and sell Highlands Development Credits (HDCs) to developers in designated Receiving Zones. The Council certifies Sending Zone properties and oversees the TDR Bank, which was capitalized under state appropriations.

Petition for Plan Conformance: A municipality in the Planning Area that wants to align local ordinances with the RMP initiates a formal petition. As of the data reflected in the Council's conformance tracking (NJ Highlands Council, Conformance Status), 51 municipalities had submitted conformance petitions at various stages of review.

The New Jersey Pinelands Commission operates under a comparable statutory model in southern New Jersey and provides a direct structural parallel: both bodies were created by state legislation, both administer regional master plans, and both impose land use constraints beyond ordinary municipal zoning authority. The key distinction is jurisdictional geography and resource focus — the Highlands Council prioritizes highland aquifer protection while the Pinelands Commission addresses a coastal plain ecosystem.

Decision boundaries

The Council has binding authority only within the Preservation Area. In the Planning Area, the Council's RMP provisions become binding on a municipality only upon voluntary conformance. This creates a two-tier regulatory environment within the same planning region.

State agencies are required to align their grants, loans, and approvals with the RMP for actions affecting the Highlands Region (N.J.S.A. 13:20-13), establishing a cross-agency consistency obligation even where direct Council jurisdiction is limited.

Appeals from Council decisions may be filed with the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey. Individual land use permits issued by NJDEP under the Highlands rules are appealable through the Office of Administrative Law.

The Council's authority does not supersede federal environmental statutes including the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act. Where federal review applies — such as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Section 404 permits — federal jurisdiction runs concurrently and independently of Highlands Council processes.

For an overview of the broader governmental framework in which the Council operates, the New Jersey Government Authority index provides reference-level coverage of state agency and regional body structure.

References