Overview

The Pinelands Infrastructure Fund (PITF) was established in 1985 to help local governments and utility authorities defray the costs associated with supporting the population and economic growth targeted at Pinelands Regional Growth Management Areas.  By supporting growth in the Regional Growth Area, the Act simultaneously offered land value equity to property owners in the Preservation Area, Special Agricultural Production Area, and Agricultural Production Area through implementation of the Pinelands Development Credit (PDC) Program.  Various types of infrastructure may be funded pursuant to the Act.

The PITF Act required the Pinelands Commission to create a Pinelands Infrastructure Master Plan. (See the 1986 Master Plan here.) The Infrastructure Master Plan accomplished three things. It delineated a funding structure for loans, grants, and local matching funds. It created a ranking system by which proposed infrastructure projects would be judged for funding eligibility. Lastly, it generated the list of projects that were deemed eligible for the initial round of funding. Projects proposed for funding must first be approved by the Pinelands Commission and then forwarded to the State Infrastructure Bank for legislative appropriation.  The Pinelands Infrastructure Master Plan must be amended for each round of funding.  An amendment to the Pinelands Infrastructure Master Plan may alter the ranking system, the allocation of funds, and/or the projects deemed eligible for funding. PITF funds are only available to aid projects that serve a Pinelands Regional Growth Area.

Pinelands Infrastructure Master Plan Amendment

The Infrastructure Master Plan has been amended multiple times since 1986, most recently in 2019.  Only two of the projects prioritized by the 2019 amendment have made substantial progress toward completion.  As a result, there is available funding of approximately $10M that may be awarded in a future round of priority projects. At this time the Commission is seeking to amend the Infrastructure Master Plan to revise the ranking criteria, limit the categories of eligible infrastructure to water supply and/or wastewater, and increase the interest rate to 2% for the loan portion of any funding award. The proposed amendment can be viewed here on the Commission’s website.  A second amendment will be necessary to adopt a new list of priority projects into the Infrastructure Master Plan.

In accordance with a requirement of the Pinelands Infrastructure Trust Bond Act that the Pinelands Commission must formally adopt any amendment to the Pinelands Infrastructure Master Plan, the Pinelands Commission will conduct a public hearing on a proposed amendment of the Pinelands Infrastructure Master Plan.  The Commission public hearing will be conducted online on July 22, 2026 at 10:00 a.m., to solicit public comments on this proposed amendment of the Infrastructure Master Plan. A link to the hearing is available on the Commission’s home page under the Hearings tab. Comments may be submitted at the hearing or sent directly to the Pinelands Commission office, 15 Springfield Road, P.O. Box 359, New Lisbon, New Jersey 08064 or via facsimile (609) 894-7330 or by email through the Commission's web site at https://www.nj.gov/pinelands/home/contact/public.shtml no later than July 27, 2026.

Following the public hearing, the Commission will review public comments and may adopt the proposed amendment to the Infrastructure Master Plan. Subsequently, a request for project proposals will be issued and a second amendment to the Infrastructure Master Plan would be created to reflect the new list of prioritized projects.