New Jersey says it's working through the pile of stalled state permits, at least for some of the routine approvals builders hit most often. Gov. Mikie Sherrill's administration said Wednesday, Oct. 28, that the Department of Environmental Protection has cut its backlog of wetlands determinations by 74% since January and the Department of Transportation has cut its backlog of minor driveway access permits by 83% (via New Jersey Monitor). The governor's office put out the full numbers in its own release the same day.
Here's how the state's figures break down.
Wetlands Letters of Interpretation are the DEP documents that confirm whether wetlands are on a property and where the boundaries fall. Applications pending six months or longer dropped from 927 to 240 since Jan. 20, according to the release.
Minor Access permits cover lower-traffic driveways that connect to state highways. The number pending fell from 653 to 108, and that included clearing 523 permits that had stalled.
The bigger, more complicated approvals haven't moved as fast. The Major Access permit backlog, for driveways that carry at least 500 trips a day onto a state highway, is down 19%, from 262 to 211. DEP's Remedial Action Permit backlog, tied to contaminated-site cleanups, is down 25%, from 656 to 493. The state said both of those drops came in just the last few months.
The state credits more people and a few structural changes. DEP has hired and onboarded 49 new staff with money from the fiscal 2027 budget, according to the release (the Monitor put it at about 50). DOT moved all of its permitting work into a new Division of Transportation Permitting and fully digitized its Major Access process. Transportation Commissioner Priya Jain said the department used its e-permitting data to spot where applications were getting stuck and sent staff there.
DEP Commissioner Ed Potosnak described how bad it had gotten. "There were so many that were over 18 months, waiting to start a process, waiting to decide where I can and how I should design a project," he said at the event in Bordentown, as reported by the Monitor. He said the department wants to get permit wait times under a year.
The state also opened the public view of its New Jersey Permitting Dashboard Pilot at Permits.NJ.gov. For now it follows 10 pilot projects through review at DEP, DOT and the Department of Community Affairs. For each one it shows every permit applied for, which agency has it, and the date each step was finished, from completeness review through technical review to a final decision. The state says it's automating the dashboard so more projects can be added in the coming months, and agencies are drafting "shot clock" review timelines that will eventually show up there too.
The piece that could reach the most small contractors is still on the drawing board. Community Affairs Commissioner Jacquelyn A. Suárez said DCA and the New Jersey Innovation Authority are building a unified construction permitting system, a single online platform that would cover a permit from application to certificate of occupancy. No launch date was given. DCA is also mapping the municipal Uniform Construction Code process, according to the release.
Business groups at the event were upbeat. "My members and others here today have heard all the promises before and are naturally skeptical," Dan Kennedy, CEO of the New Jersey chapter of the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, said, according to the Monitor. "You have turned a lot of that pessimism into optimism already."
Why it matters for Contractors
A wetlands Letter of Interpretation and a DOT driveway permit both tend to sit at the very front of a job: you need to know where the wetlands line is before you can lay out a site, and a new or changed driveway onto a state highway needs DOT's sign-off. If you've had either one sitting with the state for months, now is a good time to check its status and push for a decision.
Keep the numbers in perspective. These are the administration's own figures, and the biggest drops are in the simplest permit types. Major access and remediation permits are moving slower, so don't build an 80% speedup into a schedule for a job that needs one of those.
For most small shops, the day-to-day permits are local building permits under the Uniform Construction Code, not state wetlands or highway approvals. That makes DCA's planned online construction permitting system the item to watch, but there's no timeline yet. The public dashboard is worth a look to see how long each review step is taking, though with only 10 pilot projects on it, you can't track your own job there yet.