The last of New Jersey's farmland preservation funding was allocated at the end of July. The last of its open space and historic preservation funds will be officially committed to projects this fall.

Then the preservation pipeline will run dry -- unless the state Legislature acts quickly to replenish funding for the Garden State Preservation Trust.

It's hard to imagine New Jersey without a pool of money for buying parks, keeping farmland in agricultural production, protecting woodlands and wetlands, and saving historic places. Since 1961, residents of the nation's most densely populated state have voted again and again to make open space a top priority.

The Garden State Preservation Trust is one of the most successful programs of its kind. In addition to paying for direct acquisition of state lands, the GSPT has been an incredible catalyst for county and local land preservation.

Encouraged by the prospect of state dollars, hundreds of New Jersey municipalities have created their own open space funds to leverage for land conservation projects.

Since 1999, more than 116,000 acres of farmland have been directly preserved through the GSPT.

That accounts for roughly 70 percent of the state farmland preservation program's total of almost 168,000 preserved acres. More than 210,000 additional acres of open space were preserved with GSPT funds through the state Green Acres program.

When the 10-year bond measure that funded the Garden State Preservation Trust ran its course last year, the governor and Legislature missed a prime opportunity to provide stable, long-term funding for the future. Instead, they put a question on the ballot for $200 million in stopgap funding for the next fiscal year.

Voters approved it, continuing a 47-year trend of support for land preservation.

Because demand for preservation projects outstrips the supply of GSPT funding, there was already a long list of eligible properties "in the pipeline." On July 29, the state gave the green light to more than $91 million in farmland preservation programs and projects, including $2 million grants to each of 15 counties.

For all practical purposes, the remaining $109 million from last November's bond issue is also committed.

Although these projects have not yet been publicly announced, the reality is that the GSPT is flat out of money. We're right back where we were last summer -- with no long-term plan for funding conservation of natural resources, open spaces and farmland.

Actually, the situation is worse this year because it's now too late to get a funding question on the Nov. 4 ballot.

That's a shame, because a poll commissioned last spring by the Trust for Public Land and The Nature Conservancy showed that a solid majority of voters statewide support preservation funding.

Sixty-one percent said they would support an $800 million bond act, 58 percent said they would support a water user fee to raise $150 million a year, and 54 percent said they would support dedicating $175 million in existing annual sales tax revenues.

Despite the state's economic downturn, I don't believe for a minute that New Jerseyans want to see the GSPT dwindle to nothing.

Without state funds to match local and county open space funds, scores of local farmland preservation and open space projects will be stopped in their tracks.

Gov. Jon Corzine and our state legislators must identify a way to replenish GSPT funding when the Legislature returns from its summer break -- and make it a long-term, stable source so we don't have to go through this uncertainty year after year!