Court Opinion

ID: 9705219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:00:06.323736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:08.985922
License: Public Domain

SCHREIBER, J.,
dissenting.
The Coastal Area Facility Review Act (CAFRA), N.J.S.A. 13:19-1 to —21, is an environmental protection statute administered by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). While I understand the allure of finding a grant of “fair-share housing” authority emanating from CAFRA, the statute simply does not contain such a charge. CAFRA does not clothe the DEP with plenary zoning authority. That the majority would prefer to share responsibility or credit with the Legislature, as well as an agency of the executive branch, for this Court’s Mt. Laurel initiatives is equally understandable. See ante at 370. *375The statute’s text, buttressed by the Legislature’s conception of the DEP evidenced in other statutes, precludes such largess.
Certain well-established principles govern this analysis. First, the authority of an administrative agency is limited to those powers expressly granted to it by the Legislature, including those reasonably necessary to effectuate the specific delegation. The grant of authority is to be construed to enable the agency to accomplish its statutory responsibilities. New Jersey Guild of Hearing Aid Dispensers v. Long, 75 N.J. 544, 562 (1978). It is only to that end that courts imply incidental powers necessary to effectuate the legislative intent. Second, actions of an agency beyond its jurisdiction are ultra vires and void. Swede v. City of Clifton, 22 N.J. 303, 312 (1956). Justice Clifford in In re the Closing of Jamesburg High School, 83 N.J. 540 (1980), quoted approvingly from Elizabeth Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass’n v. Howell, 24 N.J. 488, 499 (1957), that “an administrative officer is a creature of legislation who must act only within the bounds' of the authority delegated to him. .. . ” He observed that “[wjhere there exists reasonable doubt as to whether such power is vested in the administrative body, the power is denied.” 83 N.J. at 549. Third, when an important policy question is involved, “[a] court should not find such authority in an agency unless the statute under consideration confers it expressly or by unavoidable implication.” Burlington County Evergreen Park Mental Hosp. v. Cooper, 56 N.J. 579, 598 (1970).
These principles are particularly pertinent in this case. Only one section of the New Jersey Constitution expressly refers to zoning, Art. IY, § 6, par. 2. It provides that “[t]he Legislature may enact general laws under which municipalities, other than counties, may adopt zoning ordinances ... and the exercise of such authority shall be deemed to be within the police power of the State.” The Legislature acted shortly after this authority was first vested in it (the zoning amendment was adopted by special election in 1927) by enacting legislation that delegated to municipalities comprehensive control over zoning. The Legislature has only recently codified this legislation, confirming and *376extending municipal authority over zoning. Municipal Land Use Law, N.J.S.A. 40:55D-1 to -99; see generally Southern Burlington County N.A.A.C.P. v. Township of Mount Laurel (Mount Laurel II), 92 N.J. 158, 318-321 (1983).
On occasion the Legislature has superseded municipal zoning authority. With respect to the Hackensack meadowlands the Legislature saw fit to establish the Hackensack Meadowlands Commission to develop the region. Hackensack Meadowlands Reclamation and Development Act, N.J.S.A. 13:17-1 to -86. The statute expressly nullified conflicting municipal zoning ordinances. Section 16(b) states that
no action involving a municipal master plan, zoning, ordinance, subdivision, building, or site plan approval, the official map, or the grant or variance or special exception shall be taken by a public body of a constituent municipality, or affected county which shall be inconsistent with the master plan [of the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission]. [N.J.S.A. 13:17-16(b)]
The pinelands area of the state has been subjected to the developmental control of the Pinelands Commission. Pinelands Protection Act, N.J.S.A. 13:18A-1 to -29; see N.J.S.A. 13:18A-4. The Legislature requires that county and municipal master plans and local land-use ordinances conform to the Commission’s comprehensive management plan and minimum standards contained therein. N.J.S.A. 13:18A-12. Control over municipal and county action is detailed. For example, the Commission is authorized to review any final municipal or county approval of any application for development to determine compliance with the Commission’s comprehensive management plan and minimum standards contained therein. N.J.S.A. 13:18A-15.
CAFRA was enacted in 1973, the Hackensack Meadowlands Act in 1969 and the Pinelands Act in 1979. CAFRA has no similar provisions granting the DEP power to promulgate master plans overriding those of the local zoning authorities. The reason for this omission is manifest when reading CAFRA. CAFRA does not give the DEP plenary zoning authority. Its aim and purpose are to protect portions of the coastal area “suffering serious adverse environmental effects” and to protect *377the “natural environmental resource called the coastal area.” N.J.S.A. 13:19-2. A fair reading of the statute supports only that conclusion.
Respect for municipal zoning is expressly contemplated. Section 19 states that CAFRA’s provisions are not to be regarded as “in derogation of any powers now existing and shall be regarded as supplemental and in addition to powers conferred by other laws, including municipal zoning authority.” N.J.S.A. 13:19-19; The Legislature’s concern reflected in CAFRA was the environmental impact of development along the New Jersey shore. This concern obviously transcended municipal boundaries and the Legislature carefully defined the coastal area. N.J.S.A. 13:19-4. This Court had previously arrived at a similar conclusion in Lusardi v. Curtis Point Property Owners Ass’n, 86 N.J. 217 (1981). There Justice Pashman, on reviewing regulations promulgated under CAFRA, observed: “Although these [CAF-RA] regulations do not preempt local zoning authority, they embody carefully considered policies for the use of coastal resources that local officials must take into account in zoning shoreline property within their communities.” Id. at 229. Indeed it is incomprehensible that the Legislature, cognizant of the municipality’s plenary zoning power, would not have harmonized or otherwise provided for the situation in which the municipality’s actions, under its zoning authority, could conflict with those of the Commissioner.
In Southern Burlington County N.A.A.C.P. v. Township of Mount Laurel (Mt. Laurel I), 67 N.J. 151, appeal dismissed, 423 U.S. 808, 96 S.Ct. 18, 46 L.Ed.2d 28 (1975), this Court laid down the proposition that a municipality could not by its zoning ordinance effectively exclude low and moderate income families from living within its borders. Such an ordinance was contrary to general welfare and therefore had to fall or be amended. One means of rectifying such an exclusionary ordinance was to adopt one that would assure that the municipality provided for sufficient low and middle income housing to meet its fair share *378in the region. None of these municipal exclusionary problems motivated the Legislature in enacting CAFRA.
We are concerned with the legislative intent. The majority seeks to discern that intent from the statutory language, relying substantially on the general conclusory reference in the legislative findings, N.J.S.A. 13:19-2, that the coastal area “should be dedicated to those kinds of land uses which promote the public health, safety and welfare.” When read in context the phrase is simply part of the broad environmental charge of CAFRA. Specifically, note that the majority has quoted this phrase without the “therefore” that both proceeds it and clearly links the phrase to the environmental concerns that permeate the paragraph.1 Certainly the Legislature was not considering *379“fair-share housing” in the Mt. Laurel sense, particularly since CAFRA antedated Mt. Laurel I.
The specific provisions of CAFRA relied on by the majority can hardly provide authority for the implication of “fair-share housing” power. The majority quotes section 10(f) of CAFRA as “illustrat[ing] the nature of [the DEP’s] regulatory functions.” Ante at 364; N.J.S.A. 13:19 — 10(f). However, when read in context, section 10(f) can be seen as just one of a list of environmental criteria that calls to mind more the dangers of nuclear power than the need for low income housing.2
*380The majority makes much of the Legislature’s use of the word “residential” in section 16. Ante at 365; N.J.S.A. 13:19-16. The fact that the agency is to “take into account” the “legitimate need for economic and residential growth” does not provide a basis for the implication of the authority to fix affirmatively a percentage of low income housing. The sentence merely admonishes the Commissioner to recall that environmentalism does not exist in a vacuum. Accordingly, the second use of the term “residential” is carefully couched in environmental terms as well: “The environmental design ... shall include a delineation of various areas appropriate for the development of residential and industrial facilities of various types, depending on the sensitivity and fragility of the adjacent environment to the existence of such facilities.”' Id. (emphasis supplied). Once again, in context the Legislature’s intent is evident.3
*381Beyond this less than compelling textual analysis, the majority cites as support opinions of this Court regarding municipal zoning. Ante at 366. These cases are more than inapposite: municipalities have plenary zoning authority, the DEP does not. If CAFRA stated that the DEP may act as a municipal zoning board in the coastal area, the cited cases would be of help. Since CAFRA contains no such pronouncement, their recitation merely begs the question.
And it is because municipal zoning has been expressly preserved in the coastal area that the granting of fair-share housing authority to CAFRA would be ill-advised. The majority claims that “[i]t would make no sense at all to hold that the general welfare encompasses the provision of low and moderate income housing at the behest of municipalities, but not of state agencies.”4 Ante at 367. In fact it would make good sense. If a municipality meets its Mt. Laurel obligation, its duty has been satisfied.5 There is no need to superimpose the DEP’s concept of what is needed, particularly since its concept may differ from that of the municipality. The confusion and potential for conflict created by this Court’s holding today argues against its reasoning, not for it. The majority admits as much, ante at 370, and then offers a solution that belies any statutory basis for its decision: “If problems should develop because of the overlapping jurisdiction of the municipality and DEP, the Legislature can resolve the conflict through amendments to the statutory scheme.” Ante at 371.
More than unsupportable, the majority’s conclusion is affirmatively countermanded by the words of the act. The statute *382speaks to those concerns commonly referred to as “environmentalism.” For example* section 6 requires an Environmental Impact Statement. N.J.S.A. 13:19-6. No such broad and formal analysis is demanded regarding housing availability. Similarly, the Commissioner of Environmental Protection is commanded to make an “environmental inventory.” N.J.S.A. 13:19-16. From this environmental inventory, the Commissioner is to develop “long-term environmental management strategies.” Id. Beyond the text of CAFRA, other legislative pronouncements make the “environmental message” of the act most evident.
The Department of Environmental Protection, to which the Legislature has entrusted the administration of CAFRA, is generally charged with “the promotion of environmental protection and the prevention of pollution of the environment of the State.” N.J.S.A. 13:lD-9. The powers of the DEP, enumerated in 13:lD-9, speak to pollution abatement. Other acts passed by the Legislature for the DEP to administer are also in the ecological vein. See, e.g., Pesticide Control Act of 1971, N.J.S.A. 13:1F-1 to -16; Noise Control Act of 1971, N.J.S.A. 13:1G-1 to -23. It would indeed be a strained construction of “environmentalism” that would find “fair-share housing” among its concerns. This is not “a constitution we are expounding.” M’Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 407, 4 L.Ed. 579, 602 (1819).
When the Legislature has intended to grant plenary zoning power to a state agency, it has done so in unambiguous language. The Pinelands Commission was organized to “insure the realization of pinelands protection through the establishment of a regional planning and management commission empowered to prepare and oversee the implementation of a comprehensive management plan for the pinelands area.” N.J.S.A. 13:18A-2 (emphasis added). A similar mandate was not given in CAFRA. *383Furthermore, unlike its duties under CAFRA,6 the DEP was not asked to administer the Pinelands Act. Instead a new authority, not narrowly tailored to the pursuit of environmental goals, was created. The Legislature in creating the Pinelands Commission chose to make it independent of any supervision or control by the DEP. N.J.S.A. 13:18A-4. Authority to administer the Pinelands Act was not delegated to the DEP because the Pinelands Act is not solely an environmental statute. Conversely, power to administer CAFRA was appropriately delegated to the DEP by the Legislature because it was exclusively environmental interests that CAFRA was intended to advance. See also the Hackensack Meadowlands Act, N.J.S.A. 13:17-5, -9, -11, -12, -13, -15, -17, -21.
I am not taking issue with the laudable goals of Mt. Laurel I and II. I also in no sense intend to deprecate the task that the DEP is charged with by CAFRA. I insist only that the task of environmental superintendence of our “exceptional, unique, irreplaceable and delicately balanced . .. natural environmental resource called the coastal area” is the difficult and sole duty conferred by that act. N.J.S.A. 13:19-2. The words of CAFRA and the structure of more comprehensive grants of zoning authority make clear that the Legislature so intended. Under CAFRA, the DEP does not have the authority expressly or by implication to impose fair-share housing. To grant the DEP such authority involves an important policy question — to be decided by the Legislature. This Court ought welcome legislative participation in its Mt. Laurel initiative only when such participation is intended.
I would modify the conditional permit by eliminating the housing quotas..
*384For affirmance —Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices CLIFFORD, HANDLER, POLLOCK and GARIBALDI — 5.
For reversal —Justice SCHREIBER — 1.

The statutory section reads in full:
N.J.S.A. 13:19-2. Legislative findings
The Legislature finds and declares that New Jersey’s bays, harbors, sounds, wetlands, inlets, the tidal portions of fresh, saline or partially saline streams and tributaries and their adjoining upland fastland drainage area nets, channels, estuaries, barrier beaches, near shore waters and intertidal areas together constitute an exceptional, unique, irreplaceable and delicately balanced physical, chemical and biologically acting and interacting natural environmental resource called the coastal area, that certain portions of the coastal area are now suffering serious adverse environmental effects resulting from existing facility activity impacts that would preclude or tend to preclude those multiple uses which support diversity and are in the best long-term, social, economic, aesthetic and recreational interests of all people of the State; and that, therefore, it is in the interest of the people of the State that all of the coastal area should be dedicated to those kinds of land uses which promote the public health, safety and welfare, protect public and private property, and are reasonably consistent and compatible with the natural laws governing the physical, chemical and biological environment of the coastal area.
It is further declared that the coastal area and the State will suffer continuing and ever-accelerating serious adverse economic, social and aesthetic effects unless the State assists, in accordance with the provisions of this act, in the assessment of impacts, stemming from the future location and kinds of facilities within the coastal area, on the delicately balanced environment of that area.
The Legislature further recognizes the legitimate economic aspirations of the inhabitants of the coastal area and wishes to encourage the development of compatible land uses in order to improve the overall *379economic position of the inhabitants of that area within the framework of a comprehensive environmental design strategy which preserves the most ecologically sensitive and fragile area from inappropriate development and provides adequate environmental safeguards for the construction of any facilities in the coastal area.

The statutory section reads in full:
N.J.S.A. 13:19-10. Issuance of permit; grounds
The commissioner shall review filed applications, including the environmental impact statement and all information presented at public hearings. He shall issue a permit only if he finds that the proposed facility:
a. Conforms with all applicable air, water and radiation emission and effluent standards and all applicable water quality criteria and air quality standards.
b. Prevents air emissions and water effluents in excess of the existing dilution, assimilative, and recovery capacities of the air and water environments at the site and within the surrounding region.
c. Provides for the handling and disposal of litter, trash, and refuse in such a manner as to minimize adverse environmental effects and the threat to the public health, safety, and welfare.
d. Would result in minimal feasible impairment of the regenerative capacity of water aquifers or other ground or surface water supplies.
e. Would cause minimal feasible interference with the natural functioning of plant, animal, fish, and human life processes at the site and within the surrounding region.
f. Is located or constructed so as to neither endanger human life or property nor otherwise impair the public health, safety, and welfare.
g. Would result in minimal practicable degradation of unique or irreplaceable land types, historical or archeological areas, and existing scenic and aesthetic attributes at the site and within the surrounding region.

The statutory section reads in full:

N.J.S.A. 13:19-16. Environmental inventory; alternate long-term environmental management strategies; environmental design; presentation to Governor and legislature

The commissioner shall, within 2 years of the taking effect of this act, prepare an environmental inventory of the environmental resources of the coastal area and of the existing facilities and land use developments within the coastal area and an estimate of the capability of the various area within the coastal area to absorb and react to man-made stresses. The commissioner shall, within 3 years of the taking effect of this act, develop from this environmental inventory alternate long-term environmental management strategies which take into account the paramount need for preserving environmental values and the legitimate need for economic and residential growth within the coastal area. The commissioner shall, within 4 years of the taking effect of this act, select from the alternate environmental management strategies an environmental design for the coastal area. The environmental design shall be the approved environmental management strategy for the coastal area and shall include a delineation of various areas appropriate for the development of residential and industrial facilities of various types, depending on the sensitivity and fragility of the adjacent environment to the existence of such facilities. The environmental inventory, the alternate long-term environmental management strategies and the environmental design for the coastal area shall be presented to the Governor and the Legislature within the time frame indicated herein.

Even if this statement were true, it ignores the fact that the choice of whether the municipality or a state agency or both should determine fair-share housing proportions is a question of judgment to be decided by the Legislature, not the courts.

Appeal from municipal action would be to the specially assigned Superior Court judges. Mt. Laurel II, supra.

CAFRA does provide for a Coastal Area Review Board that is “in but not of’ the DEP, but it exists solely to hear appeals from the decision of the DEP’s Commissioner. N.J.S.A. 13:19-13.