Black Run Preserve by Randy Stanard
Policy Notes - November 2025
$3 Million committed to Black Run headwaters. Artificial turf continues to draw ire of Commissioners. Policy Notes are designed to update the public on the activities of the Pinelands Commission, which have been summarized by Pinelands Alliance staff who attend all public meetings of the Commission.
$3 Million Closer to Preserving the Headwaters of the Black Run
Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) Amendments to down-zone an 835-acre property forming the headwaters of the Black Run Watershed, are in the last leg of their journey through the bureaucracy of the Pinelands Commission. This will effectively limit how many homes can be built there. Meanwhile, negotiations have been underway to go even further—and fully preserve the land so that no development can occur there.
In some rare cases, land is straight-up donated to a preservation organization, but more often land is preserved through a purchase deal using public funds. Several things need to line up for this to happen, so we need:
- a willing seller
- an entity willing to steward the land, once preserved
- An agreed-upon sales price
- A collection of funds to offer for the final sale
In the case of the headwaters of the Black Run Preserve, most of these items are looking good, and it is the last part that is still being worked on. The Pinelands Commission recently made a big contribution to help with that last item!
At the October 31 meeting of the P&I Committee, the Commissioners reviewed applications submitted for the annual Pinelands Conservation Fund, which dedicates funds to four types of projects: permanent land protection; conservation planning and research projects; community planning and design initiatives; and education and outreach.
Millions of dollars have been available for these proposals, so Commissioners and staff have been puzzled by a lack of applications to the fund in recent years. However, this ended up being a good thing for the Black Run watershed, as the whole pot of money—three million dollars—was available for this single proposal from the NJ Conservation Foundation. They went all in! The full three million dollars has been dedicated towards the preservation offer that is in the works.
Your Car Can Help Fund Preservation
Have you seen cars with these spiffy Pinelands license plates driving around? Pinelands Commission staff reported at the November meeting that this license plate program typically brings in $4,000-6,000 per month! As a result of the program’s success, there is currently a pot of $750,000 that can be used for conservation projects—like the Black Run headwaters described above.
To get your own dedicated Pinelands plate and support the program, you have to go through the MVC—with an initial $50 fee and $10 annual renewal.
More Plastic Invading the Pinelands
Although the Pinelands Commission continues to approve proposals for artificial turf fields—we estimate at least 10 such fields in the last decade—the Commissioners have become increasingly vocal about the need to address this issue.
The November meeting of the Pinelands Commission was the most recent example of this: Shawnee High School was applying to expand the perimeter of an existing artificial turf field, with an additional 13,744 square feet. The commissioners still approved the application (with one abstaining), but multiple voiced their growing discomfort with approving these fields.
Rittler-Sanchez briefly commented: “As usual, I’m less than pleased with any installation of artificial turf, but in this case, they’ve already got a field….”
Commissioner Lohbauer also voted yes, but “wanted to emphasize for us that in the executive director’s report on this application, it was pointed out to us that there is no standard for construction materials for the Pinelands Commission to review, and for that reason, there was no basis for us to question what science is telling us is a real concern about artificial turf.” He was essentially pushing back on the idea that Commissioners cannot consider the materials being used in these fields—as he has explained in previous meetings, the Pinelands Commission has a mandate to protect Pinelands water quality, so continuing to approve artificial turf fields is not compatible with this.
Lohbauer continued: “we really need to catch up to what the science is revealing now about artificial turf, and I would consider it very important in the coming months that we examine that science, see whether or not we agree that artificial turf could, in fact, pose a danger to the purity of our underground water supply in the Pinelands and consider whether or not we should amend the CMP to allow us to restrict the development of artificial turf fields in the Pinelands.”
Months since the Pinelands Municipal Council last met: 37 months.
