URL http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05EEDF113EF935A35756C0A9619C8B63

DATE/ AUTHOR None	AUTHORS: 

H THE WEEK; Storms Prompt Bill on Buying Flood Properties

S1 The almost yearly cycle of flooding along the Passaic River and in the Delaware Valley has prompted a coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the State Assembly to push for a $1.7 billion bond referendum on the November ballot that would allow the state to buy homes that could be in the path of future floods.

S2 The bond issue, which would allocate up to $175 million a year for the next 10 years, would draw on a fraction of the state sales tax.
S3 The money would also help preserve open space, farmlands and historic trusts.
S4 The measure was announced on Wednesday in Fairfield, an Essex County community that flooded last month.

S5 Assemblyman John F. McKeon, a Democrat from Essex County who is one of the primary sponsors of the bill, said the bond issue would add money to the depleted Garden State Preservation Trust Fund.
S6 It has been used in part to buy and demolish 127 homes in floodways since its inception in 1995.

S7 ''This will act as reclamation for tideland and river basin properties that should never have been built to begin with,'' Assemblyman McKeon said.

S8 The voluntary program, Blue Acres, administered by the Department of Environmental Protection, sends three state-certified appraisers to each property to determine its value.
S9 The state then makes an offer for the property.

S10 John Moyle, the chief of the bureau for dam safety and flood control, said that many homes in danger of serious flood damage were built before the creation of regulations that specified the flood plain.

S11 Mr. McKeon said he hoped the Assembly would vote on the bill within a month; it would then go to the Senate.
S12 If it passes there, it will be on the statewide ballot in November.

S13 ''If even a fifth of the properties in this flood plain were to sell, the state could reclaim that property and make it much more as a natural barrier to land that was developed, as it should be,'' Mr. McKeon said.

S14 THE WEEK

