Herald & Lantern 25 January '84

19

Consultants Made Legal

Incinerator Smolders

fcy E ; ,J. DIJFFY VILLAS — State Department of Community Affairs officials will decide this week if they’ll investigate the hiring last summer of two, consultants by Lower Township Committee. Nevertheless, the committee decided to " rehire those consultants last week, partly to legitimize payments made to them after Sept. 5, partly to legally cover any township-related expenses incurred by the husband and wife team in the near future. Committee members drew fire this month from GOP council dandidate Samuel Stubbs, his son, Michael, and their associate Debi de la Cretaz for hiring Sue' Sanborn and Mark Lange (Sanborn-' Wielenga Associates), as recreational experts from July 5 to Sept. 5, for paying them $3,500 toward , a Untaship trash incineration study and twice that amount after Resolution 83-116, authorizing their appointments, expired. The Stubbs-de la Cretaz team not only questions the couple’s credentials but also asked Carmine Capone, deputy director of DCA’s Division of Local Government, to probe the hiring. In (heir Jan. 5 letter to Capone, they charged that township committee violated the state’s Local Public Contracts Law by hiring the pair; •THE MATTER IS still under review,” Capone said Friday. “As of now, we don’t have all the information.” Although Township Solicitor Bruce Gorman conceded that Sanborn and Lange were paid for expenses after Resolution 83-116 expired, township committee adopted another resolution (No. 84-22) Thursday, rehiring the couple from Sept. 5,1983 to June 30,1984 - the last day in office for the three-member township committee. Resolution 84-22 effectively legitimizes payments made Sanborn and Lange after Resolution 83-116 expired and allows additional payments for their expenses . through June. At least one of the out-of-state consultants is expected to show up at a township Incinerator Authority meeting next month. The latest resolution appoints the consultants as recreationally efficiency experts and “solid waste disposal advisors.” The latter designation is also retroactive in the sense that the consultants in September produced the townshipcommissioned study, “A Municipal Solid Waste Disposal Alternative for Lower Township, N.J.” • \ . Though originally hired as recreational efficiency experts, who submitted a proposal to the committee on the cost of studying recnaationTrelated activities in Ix>wer, Sanborn]Wielenga later expanded its investigation into trash disposal problems last fall. Then, the township’s local landfill (Smith’s) was slated to close unless the municipal government took it over and Lower faced the prospect of hauling its trash longer distances if that takeover was not approved by state environmental officials (ft wasn‘t). IN THEIR SEPTEMBER study, Sanborn and Lange proposed that the township could avoid expensive hauling costs and tipping fees if it burned its 14,008plus tons of yearly trash at a municipallyrun incinerator plant. That facility could be converted from the Harbisoo-Walker Refractories (magnesite plant) on 123acres at Sunset Beach, the consultants suggested. With trash (ran other municipalities caught in the disposal crunch, the plant’s tall smoke stack could be fitted with four incineration unto to produce steam for a township-operated industrial complex which would add . tax ratables for Lower, said an enthusiastic Committeeman Robert Fothergill when be unveiled the study in November. tyring a meeting of county municipal officials last fall Fothergill proposed incineration as the answer to Cape disposal problems. The owners of Mar-Tee landfill in Middle Township, which has handled 60 percent of county trash from 10 municipalities since Smith’s landfill dosed, announced then that Mar-Tee had reached its designed capadty. Thai, too, a new county landfill was (and still is) being excavated near Woodbine for a spring opening and a trash transfer station in Burleigh, Middle Township, was proposed to shorten the haul to the landfill for southern Cape communities.

Fothergill offered the township-operated incineration concept as an alternative to the transfer station but Cape freeholders opted for the Burleigh transfer station. Meanwhile, Fothergill found at least one potential client for Irash-pov/cred steam from the incinerator plant and opened negotiations with Harbtson-Walker toward township acquisition of. the magnesite plant. OVER THE OBJECTIONS of Stubbs, de la Cretaz and other critics of an Incinerator Authority, township committee authorized the creation of that fivemember authority earlier this month. Its name and number of members are required by law, Gorman told the audience at a public hearing on the question Jan. 23. But the authority will be charged with investigating various .trash disposal alternatives, be said. Stubbs vowed to request a court injunction to block authority action but has confirmed that the request awaits word from Capone on a possible DCA probe. Stubbs contended that a thorough study of incineration could not be completed for the $3,500 charged by Smith-Wielenga nor can an incineration plant be built for the cost cited by the consultants. Fothergill replied that the study was obviously accomplished for $3,500 but Stubbs questioned the competence of those who completed it. While township committee was considering appointments to the Incinerator Authority and its advisory council (see

Incinerator Authority Named

VILLAS — Township committee members adopted a resolution Monday night appointing themselves and two other Lower residents to the five-member Municipal Incinerator Authority established Jan. 9. They named Patricia Bowman of South • Cape May, wife of Villas builder Jack Bowman, to a one-year term and Walter Dilks of Erma, an owner of Shawcrest Construction Co., to a six-year term. Committeemen Thomas Clydesdale and Robert Fothergill are slated to serve twoand three-year terms, respectively. Mayor Peggie Bieberbach was named to serve a five-year term. The committee also introduced a related measure (Ordinance 84-3) which, if 'approved after a public hearing Feb. 15, will authorize formation of a five-member Solid Waste Advisory Council for the Incinerator Authority. Naming such a council and appointing a South Cape May resident to the authority were two suggestions made during the Jan. 9 public hearing on creation of the Incinerator Authority.

related story) the committeeman announced last week that Prudential-Bache, an investment firm, “is interested in finan- > ring this type of (incineration) operation. , Fresh from a-tour of a large municipal incineration p^ant in Miami,-Okla., he circnlated pictures of that facility during township committee's Thursday night work session “This Is what comes out of it — a little pile of ash,” he said. "TJiis is wbat goes into it — tires, tree stumps ... It looks like a hospital, they keep it so clean “NOW THEY'VE been burning for a year and — you see that little pile of ash — that’s one year,” Fothergill added, reviewing the photographs with his colleagues. “They burn 100 tons a day,” he continued. “Guess what the tipping fee is — $9. The Oklahoma plant operators charge neighboring municipalities $4 a ton tipping fees, he said, because those towns' trucks

-r4

have a longer haul. “They feel sorry for,

thenC’ Fothergill quipped

Miami. OUa.. built the plant for $3.1 million and expects to pay it off within seven years, Fothergill explained If Lower.has to haul its trash to the county landfill .in Woodbine or the Burleigh transfer station, it will pay an estimated $441,000 in $25 tipping fees, he said. “It looks to me like that’s the way its go ing to have to go in the future,” Committeeman Thomas Clydesdale said of incineration after Fothergill completed his presentation. Fothergill circulated the photographs again at Monday’s committee

meeting. tea.

Closing of Parkway Access Roads Looms

- By JOE ZELNIK Temporary intersection improvements are planned on the approximately fourmile state section of the Garden State Parkway in Cape May County. But over- * passes appear to be far in the future. At the request of the DOT, Middle" Townshjp is expected to build a “frontage roaiF-Lm the east side of the parkway and close about nine roads that access onto it between milepost 7.8 and milepost 11.69. Tt^at includes Third. Locust. Colonial, Pacific, Atlantic and Hereford Avenues and Bennett Road, officials said. The frontage road on the east side of the parkway would give residents on closed streets an access to it. Route 9 would serve that purpose on the west side, according to John McCarthy, DOT traffic engineer for the county. CAPE MAY COUNTY Planning Director Elwood Jarmer said Middle Township could do all this faster and cheaper than the state. * "If the state gets involved,” he^said, "then it has to acquire land, provide a turnaround; it’s an expensive project. If Middle does it, all it takes is a berm and a fence. Middle could do it tomorrow with an ordinance, a shovel and some posts.” If the state can avoid that work, Jarmer said, then it would move more quickly with improvements at the parkway intersec tions with Shell Bay Avenue, Stone Harbor Boulevard, and Crest Haven Road. Charles Voorhees, DOT supervising engineer/design for Cape May County, said the first project would be a left-turn lane at Crest Haven for northbound parkway traf-

Boulevard Project Set-

(From Page 1)

parently are still entitled to relocation benefits, although that has to be determined by our Legal Department’’ The relocation benefit would include the value of the

bouse, he said.

* COUNTY PLANNING Director Elwood Jarmer recollected that opponents of a similar proposal packed a Middle Township elementary school to appeal in

1976.

He also said there could be “problems” at either end of the project, which will run 4.2 miles from the Garden State Parkway to the so-called New Jersey connector in North Wildwood. John McCarthy, DOT traffic engineer for the county, said the question “at the Burleigh end" would be the choice among a three-lane road with left-turn lanes, a four-lane highway with a barrier curb, dividing northbound and southbound traffic, and a five-lane road with left-torn lanes. Voorhees, however, said the road would remain two-lane from Route 9 to the parkway, would expand to a three-lane with a center turn lane atthe parkway and then grow to a four-lane with a so-called Jersey barrier curb dividing northbound and southbound traffic. He said there

would be jug handles, “maybe four," every quarter mile at that section of the

road.

All that is of considerable interest to businesses in the area. ROUTE 147 CURRENTLY has a wooden drawbridge which Voorhees called “in really bad shape” over Grassy Sound. He said it will be replaced by a fixed, high-rise bridge about 2,800 feet long. The road also has a wooden bridge over Beach Creek at the North Wildwood city limits which Voorhees said would be replaced with a new structure 700 to 800

feet long.

The two-year construction time, he said, was necessary mainly because of "the

complexity of the bridges.’’

Chamber Executive director Robert C. Patterson Jr, called the Route 147 report “the most encouraging news we’yejtad:" He said Route 147 was “a priority pro ject of the chamber for 15 years or more; it s ewe m s like forever.’’ Patterson said a chapter survey of the road’s condition found that the North Wildwood Rescue Squad would avoid it and go through Stone Harbor on the way to Burdette Tomlin Hospital rather than subject patients with suspected back injuries

to the bumps.

fic. He said that could be done this spring with DOT maintenance money After that would come “wider and longer” left turn lanes on the parkway at Stone Harbor Boulevard THE STATE ALSO would close the leftturn lane off the northbound parkway just south of Shell Bay Avenue, and improve the left turn at Shell Bay by lengthening it and installing traffic signals. Contracts for the Stone Harbor and Shell Bay work could be let in a year and a half. Voorhees said, if there are no environmental problems. But county planning board members doubted that these temporary improvements would bring overpasses anyploser. “I feel uriproving the intersections is a good 10-year stall,” said chairman William J. Diller Jr. ‘—“Fve heard this topic so many times,” said John MacLeod, “If the state were sincere, we’d be further ahead today. We’ve got to tie’em down to a timetable ” NOfeODY CAN SET a timetable,” said Jarmer. “The only deadline is the next governor’s election We’d better petition hard before that. We have to get a commit ment by the next election. Who knows, we might not have a governor who says he’s sensitive to South Jersey’s needs.” Voorhees implied agreement. “There is a need for grade separation structures aL these intersections,”, he said, “when the money becomes available and the hierarchy tells this office we have the money.” There apparently is some disagreement not only about the when and where of the overpasses, but also about their desirability. McCarthy called them “the ultimate goal” and Voorhees said "everybody would like to see three interchanges ’’ Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Robert C. Patterson Jr , however, said the chamber would like one at Stone Harbor Boulevard, but at Crest Haven Road it "would dose our office. We’d be hidden behind a pile of dirt. And it would take some of the county park." VOORHEES SAID it was “our understanding the overpasses would be on Crest Haven, Stone Harbor and Shell Bay ovw the parkway. “We can raise and go back down in a short distance.” he said. “If the overpasses were on the parkway, there would be dual structures (because the parkway is two lanes in each direction) and a slowet grade requiring massive fill. That would require two huge structures at three.locations. it would no sooner touch down f^om one then it-would start up again for the next.” The cost would be high, he pointed out. Acknowledging, however, that county officials apparently favor this method, Voorhees said one possibility would be for Crest Haven and Shell Bay to go over the parkway and the parkway to go over §tone Harbor Boulevard, “They've waited too long add it's all developed," said Patterson. “But 1 beard them say the parkway doesn’t go over anything.”