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Vol. 21 No. 2 i985Stowo»»Cofp.Aiiri9(ihf»i*Md. January 9, 1985 . ■>-- .. ■- v ^ -

* - ■ t ' ■ ' Meet the Candidates Jan. 21 4 Schmidt, Repici Field Sewerage Slate

• By JOE ZELNIK P COURT HOUSE - Who on earth would want a thankless, payless job on a sewerage commission swamped with problems and recently criticized by a county grand jury f6r poor business practices? Fourteen people, that's who. They'll be on the ballot in alphabetical ord^r for the election set Saturday, Jan. 26, from 1 to 9 p.m. This will be the first commission election in 20 years. Eleven men and three women met the 1 p.m. Monday deadline to file to run for five new vacancies on a reorganized Middle Township Sewerage Commission. AT LEAST FOUR of them represent a "slate" recruited by Court House attorney Frederick L. Schmidt Jr. and Court House

Realtor Thomas J. Repici, neither of whom ^ lives in the district. Repici was indicted by a county grand jury in October for "theft of services" for allegedly connecting his Hy-Land Motor Inn to a sewer line without permission in December, 1983. He was ordered to disconnect. The Schmidt-Repici ticket, reportedly put together during and after a meeting in Schmidt's Court House office Dec. 29, includes Dr. Lawrence Macatee, Dr. John Napolean, Michael Mills, and Gregory Willis. ALSO A CANDIDATE who volunteered to run at that meeting is Joanne Tinney. She told the Herald-Lantern Monday night that she is running as an independent. Willis, who was nominated by Repici at

that meeting, and Tinney both have Realtors' licenses with Avalon Real Estate, but neither has been selling real estate for some time. Hiere appears to be a second group, less formal than the Schmidt-Repici slate, but opposed to it, that includes Al Karaso, who was vocal in opposition to the Court House Convalescent Center, Phil Heck, Jeanne DeVico and Madelyn McNichol. Also running are Leroy Westcott, the only one of three incumbents seeking reelec tion, Lawrence Parks, Edwin Stites Sr., James Killian and Louis Irmler. VOTERS OF the sewage district, and that apparently means anybody connected to the sewage lines in Court House, will have the opportunity to question the candidates at a Middle Township Chamber of Commerce-

sponsored "Candidates Night" tentatively . set for 7:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 21, in township hall. The chamber decided on that last Monday night, named Charles Raff moderator, and ** established procedure that will give each candidate five minutes for remarks, then follow with one-minute questions from the audience and two-minute answers. Schmidt distributed a "memorandum" at his meeting in which he first called for "an immediate moratorium on all additional hook-ups into the system" ( wtucH is already in effect), and then called for "elimination" of the moratorium. ij* THE MEMORANDim said the moratorium "obviously stailOs in the way of renewed prosperity in th^ Court House (Page lOPleasi)

News— Digest ^stories Secret No. 1 COURT HOUSE — County freeholders, who met privately six times in December, held their first secret meeting of 1985 yesterday. The freeholders had a "special meeting" at 5 p.m. and voted unanimously to immediately "meet privately on personnel and legal matters." The state's Open Public Meetings Law limits closed sessions to "discussion" of a few subjects and forbids taking action on anything. It also requires that the resolution authorizing the secret session state "as precisely as possible. . when the discussion. . .can be to the public." The freeholder resolution said nothing about that. Deep and Dry ERMA — Quiet as a whirlybird, the Shell Oil-sponsored expedition to find oil beneath the Atlantic Ocean off the edge of the Continental Shelf has been scuttled. With it went the support station at the county airport, two renters worth $46,800 a year. Shell and Sonat had been renting 7,800 square feet of office space, now available. Also gone are four or five helicopters, that were using one hanger and plenty of Southern Jersey Airways fuel. Sonat's "Discoverer Seven Seas," a drilling ship, sailed away after achieving a record depth of 7,000 feet. It was a dry hole. Bud's Back STONE HARBOR - Former borough council president Eric J. (Budl Arenberg has been appointed to fill the one-year unexpired term of retired Councilman Robert J. Fitzpa trick. Arenberg, defeated in the Republican primary last year, tallied 46 write-ins in the fall election as supporters boosted him for this appointment. Others suggested by the Republican Committee were James 'Page 18 Please) o [ Offer Latin At Regional? ERMA — Latin, the dead language, may be making a comeback next September in the Lower Cape May Regional Scbopl District. Teachers and administrators hope to be able to offer Latin for the first time to incoming freshmen. The district, which serves Cape May, Lower Township, West Cape May and Cape May Point, currently has 400 students studying other foreign languages, including French and Spanish. h In a preliminary budget workshop conducted by Supt. Ephraim R. Keller last week, educators told the school board that 50 youngsters who will be entering ninth grade in the fall have already expressed an interest in taking Latin. . j The school board took the matter under consideration.

Mt. Olive Baptist Church Warned Off Water

TCE Found on Both 4 I ■ Sides of Parkway

By JOE ZELNIK ' COURT HOUSE - TCE. It stands for trichloroethylene, an industrial degreasing agent that has turned up in a half-dozen private water wells on East Pacific and East Atlantic avenues — so far. Among the latest additions to the list of property owners told not to use the water — the ML Olive Baptist Church on East Atlantic. The most ominous new development: contamination found in a well on Atlantic Avenue east of the parkway, according to , Mayor Michael Voll. I Neither county Health Officer Louis J. La manna nor Freeholder Gerald M. Thornton, who heads the department, returned Herald-Lantern phone calls. A HEALTH DEPARTMENT employee knowledgeable on the latest developments | said, "I've been told not to. talk to j . anybody." Sources told the Herald-Lantern that county and state Health officials still have no idea of the extent of the contamination t nor its source. But a state geologist is ext pec ted next week. j Sources did say the Keuffel and Esser j (K&E) plant on Route 9, linked to the contamination Monday by a banner headline, r story and photograph in the Press, an Atlantic City daily, is not a prime suspect.

A meeting was slated for 11 a.m. Tuesday, too late for the Herald-Lantern deadline, to get a firm commitment of a promised $46,000 from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to extend public water lines down East Pacific and adjacent Valley Road. VOLL, BEDRIDDEN with a back ailment, said other township committee members would meet with representatives of DEP, Health andthe New Jersey Water Company to seek a committment for funds to include East Atlantic. Although a number of chemicals have been found in water analyzed for the county by the state, trichloroethylene is the major agent. Gordon Strickland, deputy technical director for the Chemical Manufacturers Association in Washington, D.C., told the Herald-Lantern TCE "percolates very well; if goes through dirt very easily because of its small molecular size." He said it "has an odor and one can qsually detect it in small concentrations. It's like a paint solvent, rather aronuitic." STRICKLAND SAID TCE, besides being a degreasing agent, also is used to clean electronic parts and, "a long time ago, in very, very weak concentrations, it was sometimes used as an anesthesia." Dr. Renate Kimbrough, physician and toxicologist at the Center for Environmen- . (Page 10 Please)

MUA Rate Boosted By Flood By JOHN DONOHUE CAPE MAY — h£L' much of the spring flood that hit this city was processed as sewage by the County Municipal Utilities j Authority? ■ About 10 million gallons. I "We were pumping out the whole city," I said William W. Cathcart, MUA chief of I operations and maintenance. At the peak of the flood on March 29, the regional plant at Cape May processed 6.84 " million gallons that day alone. In a four-day period, March 28-31, it pumped 15.61 million gallons. The normal daily average is a little over a million gallons. INSTEAD OF being carried off by storm sewers, the flood waters were sucked into air vents of sanitary sewer lines, then metered, treated and pumped into Delaware Bay. \ Cathcart supplied the following daily flow figures from the plant: • March 27 — 1.38 million gallons: • March 28 — 3.70 million gallons. • March 29 — 6.84 million gallons. • March 30 — 2.98 million gallons. • March >31 — 2.09 million gallons. The average flow at the Cape May plant last February was 1.21 gallons per day, Cathcart said. "DURING APRIL, which was a particularly rainy month, the daily average was 1.80 million gallons," Cathcart added. So, the bills will start going out this year to help pay for it, amounting to an 18 percent increase over 1984. Cape May City Engineer Bruce Graham told city council last Wednesday that i Page 18 Please > * rinside. | WHY do people boo Pat Chojce1 Getz' husband? Page 27. DAVID Probinsky offers local investors "a piece of the action." Page 26. LOCAL fishermen losing more facilities. Lou Rodia, Page 16. QUIT saving cold turkey. It's got nothing to do with food. Dorothea Cooper, Page 34. —