{"id":3426,"date":"2025-11-25T12:30:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T17:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/?p=3426"},"modified":"2025-11-25T12:41:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T17:41:37","slug":"blue-acres-celebrates-30-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/blue-acres-celebrates-30-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Acres Celebrates 30 Years! \ud83c\udf89"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 25, 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blue Acres is officially 30 years old! <\/span>On November 7, 1995, New Jersey residents voted<\/span> to pass the <\/span>\u201cGreen Acres, Farmland and Historic Preservation, and Blue Acres Bond Act<\/span>,<\/span>\u201d <\/span>which had been<\/span> approved<\/span> by the legislature in August <\/span>of that year. <\/span>Receiv<\/span>ing <\/span><\/span>68%<\/span> voter approval<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, the Act <\/span>allocated<\/span> $340 million to the acquisition and preservation of<\/span> lands and historic sites statewide, with $30 million <\/span>dedicated<\/span> to fund the<\/span> two<\/span> new Blue Acres <\/span>bond <\/span>programs.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Newspaper<\/p>\n

\"Newspaper<\/span><\/p>\n

At its inception, Blue Acres was a subset of the Green Acres Program, with two distinct focus areas: \u201ccoastal Blue Acres\u201d and \u201cinland Blue Acres.\u201d Originally, the coastal bond program received $15 million to provide grants and low-interest loans to local governments, who would then purchase land from willing sellers. The inland fund (which also received $15 million) was for the State to directly purchase flood-prone properties specifically in the Passaic river basin floodway, where Green Acres had conducted voluntary flood buyouts as early as March1987. Including those early pre-Blue Acres buyouts in Lincoln Park (which are now maintained by an ongoing partnership under the modern Blue Acres Program), more than 1200 voluntary flood buyouts have taken place in the program\u2019s history.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the past three decades, Blue Acres has evolved through several iterations. For more than a decade, a steady stream of inland Blue Acres buyouts took place across Morris, Essex, and Passaic Counties. Then, in October 2009, the first State-led coastal Blue Acres buyout took place in Fairfield Township, Cumberland County along the Delaware Bayshore. This important step paved the way for Blue Acres\u2019 expansion into other Bayshore communities the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. As part of the state\u2019s Sandy recovery efforts, the program began utilizing several hundred million in Federal disaster response funding to conduct voluntary buyouts in hard-hit coastal, tidal and riverine communities. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Blue Acres closings through 2024. Credit Melissa O. Tier.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Feedback from participating post-Sandy buyout homeowners and communities helped inform the Program\u2019s response nine years later when Tropical Storm Ida caused widespread flooding in 2021. Blue Acres received <\/span>strong Federal funding<\/span><\/a> support for <\/span>post-Ida<\/span><\/a> voluntary buyouts: nearly $100 million in combined <\/span>disaster recovery<\/span><\/a> grants. To manage the resulting case load, the program reorganized into its current form, affectionately referred to by staff as \u201cBlue Acres 3.0.\u201d With a permanent, dedicated staff and a 30-year history of responding to flood events, Blue Acres has more recently turned its attention to proactive flood resilience work.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2024, Blue Acres received its largest, single allocation of State funding ever: <\/span>$24.7 million<\/span><\/a> in dedicated buyout funding from the Garden State Preservation Trust (GSPT). Signed in January 2025, the bill authorizing this GSPT funding has allowed Blue Acres to offer buyouts in communities not otherwise covered by Federal sources and to rapidly respond to recent flooding. Also starting in 2024, Blue Acres has been working with USDA\u2019s Natural Resources Conservation Service on recovery buyouts in Cranford, East Hanover, and South Plainfield. Generously funded by the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, these buyouts have allowed Blue Acres to work with willing sellers and to take a more active role in engaging buyout community members in the post-acquisition land use discussion.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Blue Acres has evolved over the past three decades and continues to look for ways to enhance program capacity. From humble beginnings<\/span>,<\/span> existing as an ad hoc program under the Green Acres umbrella and funded by bonds, Blue Acres has become a <\/span>national model<\/span><\/a> for <\/span>successful flood buyouts<\/span><\/a>. Blue Acres has preserved more than 360 acres for flood storage and public open space in nearly 50 municipalities across thirteen counties. Today, we continue to advance our mission of safeguarding people and property from repeat flooding while leveraging our success to focus on more proactive flood mitigation efforts. With an eye to the future, Blue Acres will continue to enhance and support New Jersey\u2019s flood resilience in the coming decades. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

November 25, 2025 Blue Acres is officially 30 years old! On November 7, 1995, New Jersey residents voted to pass the \u201cGreen Acres, Farmland and Historic Preservation, and Blue Acres Bond Act,\u201d which had been approved by the legislature in August of that year. Receiving 68% voter approval, the Act allocated $340 million to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3426"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3456,"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions\/3456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deptest.nj.gov\/blueacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}