nThe state Pinelands Commission approved an agreement among a handful of agencies to allow Ancora Psychiatric Hospital's failing water treatment plant to be closed in favor of the hospital being connected to the public sewer system.

n Egg Harbor City worked to create development design standards, by ordinance, that are both pedestrian and environmentally friendly.

n Oakcrest High School did a three-day curriculum project during which students in every grade focused on topics related to conservation and preservation.

The report also praised the Ocean County Board of Chosen Freeholders for spending $13.9 million from the Natural Lands Trust Fund on two major land acquisitions. One is a 291-acre property in Berkeley Township and the other is the 877-acre Horner Property in Ocean Township, which is located next to Wells Mills County Park and almost entirely within the Oyster Creek watershed.

Both of these properties are home to numerous threatened and endangered species, Bizub said.

In last year's report, the alliance gave the state Department of Environmental Protection a thumbs down for its fire management practices. This was partially because the prescribed burning process used by the DEP did not burn as much vegetation as it should have, according to the alliance.

This year the DEP received a positive mark for its fire management practices, which the alliance's Executive Director Carleton Montgomery said was largely due to changes it made following the May 2007 Warren Grove wildfire.

The new method causes burns much more similar to natural forest fires, which Bizub said would not only help protect forests from future fires but would also be better for the environment in the long run.

The alliance criticized the Pinelands Commission on numerous issues, including:

n The commission's lack of progress on the Comprehensive Management Plan's forestry rules on timber harvesting, land preparation and revegetation.

n It's failure to recognize New Jersey Natural Heritage Program ranks of rarity for plant species, which is used to protect endangered plants.

n The commission's lax lake management regulations, which the report claims do not do enough to limit the amount herbicides being used to control vegetation as a means of promoting recreation. This has resulted in the killing of rare, native lake vegetation, the report says.

Paul Leakan, a spokesman for the Pinelands Commission, defended the agency on these issues via e-mail Wednesday afternoon.

"Many of the negative criticisms do not fully capture or reflect the enormous amount of progress that the commission has made in completing those projects that the PPA is focused on," said Leakan, adding the commission plans to submit its forestry rules to the Pinelands Forestry Advisory Committee this summer.

He said the commission has contacted the DEP for further information about the criteria it uses to unofficially identify additional plant species of concern.

"From a regulatory standpoint, it's vital for the commission to have a clear and solid basis to support the designation of these additional species as threatened or endangered," said Leakan, adding many of these species are already heavily protected under existing Pinelands regulations because they are found in wetlands.

One of the most serious negative marks, according to Bizub, was given to the Pineland Commission for allowing Buena Vista Township to move forward with a plan that, according to the report, waives the normal pollution limit for septic systems so businesses operating on small lots can discharge five times the normal allowance of septic seepage into the groundwater.

"There has been a slow shift in philosophy from the Comprehensive Management Plan as a rule to the Comprehensive Management Plan as being just a guideline," Bizub said. "The Buena Vista issue shows how far the rules can be circumvented, and it should be a cause for great concern."

In February, Leakan said the Comprehensive Management Plan does not require municipalities to incorporate the literal terms of the Pinelands water quality program.

"Municipalities may instead adopt alternative and additional techniques that will achieve the equivalent protection of surface and ground water quality as would be achieved under the Pinelands plan," Leakan said at that time. "Buena Vista's ordinance does just that."

Under the Buena Vista law, if existing businesses exceed the allowable limit, they have to arrange for a portion of township-owned land to remain undeveloped, in order to balance out the environmental impact.

The alliance called this practice "water pollution trading."

The report also criticized the New Jersey Turnpike Authority's plans to widen the Garden State Parkway as an "old-fashioned road widening that is doomed to (fail)."

To e-mail Robert Spahr at The Press:

RSpahr@pressofac.com