Compromise Produces Scenic Rules for New Jersey’s Maurice River--in Peace : Environment: The body of water is home to many threatened species and supports several industries.

Meandering past country homes, historic farmhouses and ancient Indian settlements, the Maurice River is home to many threatened species and a stopover for migratory birds.

But the river is also the lifeblood of economically depressed Cumberland County, supporting what’s left of the area’s fishing, food-processing and shipping industries.

A federal government effort to preserve the ecology and beauty of the Maurice could have turned into a battle between environmental and economic interests. Instead, it became a model for future conservation efforts.

When the Maurice and its tributaries were added to the federal Wild and Scenic River System last year, it was one of the few times the National Park Service followed the lead of riverside communities and industry rather than forcing unwanted preservation on them.

“We’ve broken the mold,” said Patricia Charnas Weber, chief of the Park Service’s National Rivers and Trails branch in Philadelphia, which oversees Wild and Scenic River System activities for the mid-Atlantic region.

In the past when the agency considered including a river in the program, officials would conduct “perfunctory review of public comment and sentiment, and then they would go ahead and do their own thing,” said Weber.

But a compromise plan for protection of 35 miles of the Maurice and its tributaries--which took six years and hundreds of hours at contentious community meetings in five municipalities--has been agreed to by all sides: government, environmentalists and industry.

Its success could result in the conservation of more Eastern rivers, such as the Maurice, which run primarily through private property.

It could be applied to several rivers currently under Park Service study, including the Farmington in Connecticut, the Concord in Massachusetts, the Merrimack in New Hampshire and a 70-mile segment of the Lower Delaware that borders 55 municipalities and six counties in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“We have hopes for it and, frankly, it’s probably the only way we’re going to get rivers that flow primarily across private lands into the national system,” said John Haubert, who oversees studies of rivers for inclusion in the Wild and Scenic program.

The program, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary, aims to preserve the nation’s free-flowing rivers with outstanding attributes. More than 10,500 miles of waterways have been designated, with about 90% on public land primarily in Alaska, Oregon, California and Idaho.

The Maurice and its three tributaries, the Manumuskin, Menantico and Muskee, carry pristine water from southern New Jersey’s million-acre Pinelands National Reserve to the Delaware Bay. Its banks are lined with wild rice and hardwood forest.

The waterways are home to more than half of New Jersey’s threatened species of plants and animals, including the federally endangered bald eagle, peregrine falcon, short-nosed sturgeon and a globally endangered member of the pea family, the sensitive joint vetch. The river is a critical stopover for migratory birds on the Atlantic Flyway.

The area is also home to people who rely on the river for their livelihood.

“A lot of us are born and raised around here. All we wanted was to be left alone and have an opportunity to make a living,” said Jack King, 65, often a spokesman for the area’s commercial fishermen.

King, who has made his living off the river since 1958, said he signed on to the management plan after receiving assurances his side would benefit.

He and George Garrison, mayor of Commercial Township, said the promises included a waste-water treatment plant, the dredging of the mouth of the river--approved in 1944 by the Army Corps of Engineers but never financed--and exclusion from the Wild and Scenic designation of the Maurice’s last seven miles before it empties into Delaware Bay.

Rep. William J. Hughes (D-N.J.), who worked closely with all sides, said the dredging and the treatment plant are going forward, but are not linked to the river management plan.

Donald Fauerbach, 47, also has strong ties to the river. His family has lived along its banks for eight generations; some of them were schooner-sailing sea captains. In 1979, Fauerbach co-founded an environmental group, with a vague notion of saving the waterways from pollution and development.

On a recent overcast day he showed visitors tree stands along the river’s banks and on its islands that are favorite roosts for the area’s few bald eagles. A great blue heron circled Fauerbach’s small motorboat.

“That’s Jake,” Fauerbach said. “Not a lot bothers him. He knows my voice.”

Fauerbach was a leader in the fight to win designation for the river, which began in earnest Feb. 14, 1986, when the New Jersey Hazardous Waste Facilities Siting Commission listed Maurice Township as a potential plant location.

That outraged environmentalists. It also led members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation to request a study on the river for possible inclusion in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Program.

But Hughes decided that no plan would go to Congress until the five affected municipalities had signed on and written their own river management plans.

“We’ve had such difficulties over the years in our region with some environmental initiatives, we agreed one of the ground rules was that we would build a consensus,” Hughes said.

Only recently did the last holdout, Commercial Township, come aboard.

“For the longest while I was the one black sheep,” Mayor Garrison said. “But it was a matter of survival.

“Commercial Township is 34,000 square miles with 5,000 people. We have the highest unemployment and highest public assistance rates in the entire state. We don’t have any major industry. The two main means of economic subsistence are sand mining and commercial fishing,” he said.

In the end, the river protection plan is a watered-down version of the National Park Service’s usual standards.

It limits but does not stop development, designates the distances houses and septic tanks must stand from the river and regulates some types of land use. It also leaves open the door for designation of the river’s last seven miles.