Whitman orders NJDOT to re-examine effects of bypass

Just when area residents thought plans for the Millstone Bypass were heading in one direction, Gov. Christie Whitman has driven them in another.

The governor ordered last Thursday that the New Jersey Department of Transportation complete an Environmental Impact Statement on the potential effect of the proposed highway, which is designed to mitigate traffic problems on U.S. Route 1.

Two weeks ago, the NJDOT released its environmental assessment report on the planned project, which concluded that a more comprehensive study was unnecessary.

But Whitman overruled the department's findings. While reducing traffic is important, "We must ensure . . . that we are not creating more harm to the environment that we are trying to eliminate," she said in a statement.

Originally, the NJDOT had planned to hold a public hearing in December for area residents to express their opinions about the assessment. The department would have added its own commentary and passed the entire package to the Federal Highway Administration.

"It would be the ultimate arbiter on whether there were any environmental impacts that required studies," explained NJDOT spokesman Jim Berzok, adding that the EIS will take one to two years to complete.

Princeton Borough Mayor Marvin Reed said Whitman's surprising decision "was very much welcomed here" because the EIS will allow the public to participate in the process of mitigating the environmental impacts and reviewing alternatives to the proposed highway.

"The EIS process requires [the NJDOT] to make their review as a result of local community participation. That was the key thing we were looking for — that it's done in an open manner," Reed said.

But West Windsor Township Mayor Carole Carson, who supports the bypass, said the governor should have given West Windsor — as well as the University and the Sarnoff Corporation, the two major landowners to be affected by the bypass — "a heads up" about her planned announcement.

Carson also said the governor's timing was poor. "If she was going to do this, she should have done it before we, the tax payers, paid all this money on an environmental assessment," she said, adding that the environmental assessment — which took nearly two years for the DOT to write — is now moot.

But Reed said the change in plans for the bypass is well worth the delay. "There's no point in making big mistakes," he said.

About 700 area residents wrote letters to Whitman protesting the NJDOT's environmental assessment, Reed said. He anticipates a large delegation of Borough and Township residents will attend the public meeting the NJDOT will hold Dec. 11 to explain the assessment process.

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According to Princeton Borough Council member Wendy Benchley, the NJDOT must consider the environmental, historical and quality-of-life aspects of roads it commissions. "The federal regulations require it, and it's one thing that the NJDOT has never done very carefully in this state," she said. "Roads need to be designed not only to move traffic."

But Carson said Mercer County is under-served because such opposition always arises about new road projects.

"Everybody plays these games," she said. "We don't build anything. We just keep talking and the traffic keeps getting worse, and we keep spending millions and millions of dollars and we don't get any results. We don't produce anything."