By ED SMITH

The New Jersey Highlands Act has left a legacy of costs that are uniquely borne by the people of the Highlands region. I view things from a Warren County perspective. Less than five miles from the county's western border economic activity is vibrant, while Warren County's has stalled. Until 10 years ago, Warren County was growing like the Lehigh Valley, but then it stopped. Some say it was the recession of 2008, but Northampton and Lehigh Counties continued to grow. What happened? The Highlands Act.

The differential in growth on the two sides of the Delaware River easily translates into tens of millions of dollars in lost jobs, business activity, and tax revenues to Warren County over the past 10 years. There has been a high cost to Warren County to produce clean "Highlands" water.

Geographically, Warren County is unique in the Highlands in that all of its watersheds drain into the Delaware River. So what does the state of New Jersey do to protect the costly clean water generated in Warren County so it can be used for the benefit of other users in the state?

The answer is nothing. Water from Warren County's watersheds flows unrestricted and unpreserved into the Delaware River to be picked up at the Bull's Island water intake for the N.J. Water Authority's Delaware and Raritan Canal that flows to New Brunswick. Bull's Island is about 15 miles downstream of Warren County's southernmost watershed. The protection of Warren County's "Highlands Preservation Area" surface water lasts only until it is dumped into the Delaware River, where it frequently represents less than 1/64th of the volume of the river flow and mixes with interstate waters that may have legal nitrate levels 100 times greater. Nitrate levels are used to justify building lot sizes in the Highlands "Preservation Area" of up to 88 acres for a single family home.

Groundwater from the Highlands is equally unprotected. The grand aquifers beneath the state span well beyond the Highlands, and the costly clean Highlands water is compromised immediately when mixed with less regulated non-Highlands groundwater.

I believe that after 10 years, there is no significant measurable improvement of the general public's health safety and welfare, the standard so often used to justify a policy that ignores the protections found in our Constitution.

The sacrifice of a region can't be definitively measured by improved water quality at Bull's Island or at water wells outside of the Highlands region. Warren County's economic costs go unlisted on the balance sheet of the New Jersey Water Authority, which assigns no monetary value to the commodity they sell. The asset value of the water is zero -- only administrative, transportation, and storage costs are calculated. Costs borne by Warren County to improve water quality could not be considered because they can't be demonstrated to have yielded any measurable benefit to the quality of the water they sell.

Billions and billions of gallons of clean water, produced at significant cost, are not directly harvested, protected or accounted for, and are gone without a trace. That is the legacy of the great Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act.

Water protection does not stop at a line on a map. It either is, or is not, an obligation of the entire state to ensure that water quality is protected. Any region can pollute the aquifer, and therefore, all regions have an equal obligation to ensure that clean water is not compromised. Equal protection under the law is a foundation of our constitutional republic. Any political entity has the power to legislate more stringent regulations equitably. A legislature has no authority to place dissimilar burdens upon any particular group or class for a public benefit can't be clearly demonstrated.

The Highlands Act needs to immediately go through a cost-benefit analysis. The "nitrate dilution model" must be re-evaluated to determine its suitability to mandate 88-acre minimum lot sizes for a single family home. Finally, the Legislature needs to implement a non-discriminatory statewide water protection policy that equalizes the burden of responsibility for water protection to all regions of the state.

Ed Smith is a Warren County freeholder. He lives in Franklin Township.