JULY 2010

Underneath the Pinelands lies the Kirkwood-Cohansey, one of the country's largest aquifers with 17 trillion gallons and the primary water source for the Pinelands conservation area.

Towns have long been resigned to the strict rules the state places on water use there, but having watched their neighbors outside the Pinelands profit from the housing boom that swept the region in the middle part of the last decade, some are eager to see development restrictions eased.

"We missed a lot of projects," said Joe Gallagher, administrator for Winslow Township, which is on the western edge of the Pinelands. "There were a lot of homes going up. People saw you could get a lot of house for a reasonable price out here compared to Cherry Hill and other towns, but they weren't allowed to build here."

Managing the environmental sensitivity of the Pinelands against development demands has tested state officials since the late 1970s, when 1.1 million acres were set aside as a state-protected area.

As demand for open land has increased, so has pressure to further tap the Kirkwood-Cohansey.

The amount of water pumped from the aquifer has almost doubled since 1991 to 41.7 billion gallons a year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The aquifer is at its highest level in years, after record snowfall this year and a wet spring. But for much of the decade, the level was disturbingly low, said Daryll Pope, a hydrologist with the USGS.

"The aquifer was recovering from the 2001-02 drought. It takes a long time," he said, "to build the supply back up."

The impact of increased water demand and of pollution on the Kirkwood-Cohansey, and consequently the Pinelands, is the subject of a seven-year state and federal study to be released at the end of this year.

The nature reserve is home to a host of rare wildlife, including threatened species of hawk, sandpiper, rattlesnake, and tree frog, as well as several plant species unique to the Pinelands.

A spokesman for the Pinelands Commission, the state authority governing the area, said the agency was committed to accommodating Pinelands residents as well as protecting the land itself. Only about 60 percent of the land is considered a formal nature reserve and off-limits to development.

"The point of the program is also to protect the people who rely on the ecosystem," he said.

After years of often-tenuous negotiations, the commission recently struck an agreement with Winslow, only a portion of which sits within the Pinelands, to lift a seven-year moratorium on housing construction.

For some of the town's housing and for future development, Winslow would be required to buy water from the New Jersey-American Water Co., which pumps water from the Delaware River. Also, the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority would shut down a sewage treatment plant in Winslow and pump the town's wastewater to its South Camden facility, where it would be treated and released into the Delaware.

"The water demand [on the aquifer] will stay the same or reduce," said Paul Tyshchenko, a planner with the commission. "This agreement will also eliminate a source of pollution."

The Winslow sewage station sends treated wastewater back into the aquifer in a process termed recharging.

Andy Kricun, chief engineer at the Camden utilities authority, said the increased demand on the river would not exceed the caps on water and sewage set by the Delaware River Basin Commission.

"There's a limit to how much the aquifer can take. The Delaware River is a much larger body of water," he said.

Among environmentalists and scientists, there is concern for the Kirkwood-Cohansey's future.

Rich Bizub, director of water programs for the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, a nonprofit environmental group, has watched water utilities in South Jersey move from aquifer to aquifer, depleting one and then moving to another.

Aquifers recover naturally through precipitation, but in extreme examples, some have become so depleted that salt water has seeped in and turned the groundwater brackish, he said.

"We're playing this shell game, and we're running out of options," Bizub said. "If you look at aerial photos of the Pinelands from the 1940s, a lot of the shallow ponds have disappeared."

Outside the Pinelands, change has been afoot also.

Michael Blunt, the 55-year-old mayor of Chesilhurst, has watched what was farmland in his childhood turn into shopping centers and housing developments. But in Chesilhurst, which lies within the Pinelands reserve, residents still draw water from individual wells, and options for dining out are more or less limited to an Italian restaurant.

"I love the open space, that's why I'm here. But at the same time, you have to have some growth," Blunt said. "We have a budget shortfall this year, and I'll tell you, if we were allowed to develop like we wanted to, we wouldn't be in this situation. We're in a stranglehold."

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