I Herald - Lantern - Dispatch 7 August '85 jo

Grant to Buy Magnesite Likely

By K.J. DUFFY SUNSET BEACH — Mayor Robert Fothergill has convinced the state that I^iwer Township should own 91 acres of the former magnesite plant property here But even he admits it's going to be a tough job selling the idea to fellow councilmen again They agreed in late March that the township should file a pre-application for slate Green Acres funds to buy most of the 123-acre Harbison-Walker (H-W) Refractories tract, including 2.000 feet of Delaware Bay shorefront. Councilmen. though, were never made aware of the township costs involved, complained the mayor's political ally. Councilman Joseph loonergan. •WE ASKED QUESTIONS about the cost, he recalled. "But we were only told about the interest payments and whatever " Reading from the township grant ap plication. Lonergan noted that the town ship would pay to demolish at least one of the magnesite plant buildings and that "no doubt that the demolition would be costly " According to one estimate, the township could wind up paying $1.2 million for the property owned by Dresser Industries of • Texas Lower has the highest priority among 72 state projects for its proposal to acquire that land, according to George Klenk, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) which administers the Green Acres program Usually, he said, state legislators routinely appropriate funds for the program Klenk expects them to approve a $67:1.000 low interest loan for l«ower and a $224,455 grant, both toward the property acquisition

"THE LEGISLATURE has always been good k> the Green Acres program." he observed. And Lower can use its state funds to acquire the Dresser property through condemnation if need be. Klenk confirmed. The company was asking more than $1 million for the land in late 1983 when Fothergill first announced interest in it as the proposed site of a municipal incinerator When the township was in the process of applying for Green Acres money, the mayor said DEP officials were aware that he was eyeing the property as an incinerator site. And the township's preapplication calls for acquisition of another 5.8 acres at H-W as the "future site of an incinerator." Nevertheless, Lower's proposal was particularly attractive to the DEP, Klenk said, because "the project is one that puts back into preservation status and recreatonal status a portion of the coast line." ALLOWING BEACH access and recreation for township residents and tourists alike, acquisition of the H-W property would also-"tie in" that land with Higbee Beach and Cape May Point state parks on either side. Klenk noted. "It's going to be a recreation complex." Fothergill said in announcing the proposal last March. "It's to be a mmulti-use recreation area. "There will be something for everybody there." he added then, including senior citizen and juvenile recreational areas, a municipal boat ramp and short-term boat storage."

Last week, he also suggested a nine-hole golf course, if there's enough room for it, and. perhaps, tennis courts. "They won't take a lot of money and they would be used by everybody," he reasoned. User fees for those and other attractions would help defray the township's cost in providing them, the mayor added, conceding his colleagues' concern and possible opposition to the project. "SO FAR AS I'M concerned, I will vote against it," said Lonergan. "We don't need it." He was echoing comments from a March 25 council meeting when Cold Spring politician Phyllis Genovese called the project "a waste," because township residents don't frequent Sunset Beach Harry O'Donnell of North Cape May said then he couldn't "understand how anybody in our townstyp could want it" and former Mayor Peggie Bieberbach questioned the revenue loss from the tax-paying H-W property if the township takes most of it over. At that time. Fothergill said the propos ed acquisition would include 44 acres but. according to the grant pre-application. the township would acquire 91 acres, not counting the 5.8 acres set aside for an incinerator. That angle stirred vehement opposition from Cape May Point residents who were generally pleased to see the magnesite plant close two years ago. Since then.

Fothergill and other supporters of a township-operated incinerator have been unsuccessful in trying to convince the county MUA to allow one. The MUA claims a countywide franchise on trash disposal "WE JUST FILED it to get it filed." Lonergan said in March of the township's pre-application for Green Acres money "I don't know if it'll go through." Even before state money was on the horizon, though, he said he became suspicious of the application process. Council was hastily briefed March 25 on a pre-application. Lonergan griped, yet a detailed document, outlining Lower's proposal, was ready within two days. "There wasn't enough time" between the two for that proposal not to have been prepared well in advance of the sketchy council briefing, Lonergan said. He said he doesn't understand why councilmen didn't receive copies of the detailed grant document, or a more thorough briefing. Nor does he understand how the Green Acres administrators gave such high ranking to a project supposedly proposed through a pre-application only. "That was not a grant application" councilmen saw March 25. Lonergan insisted. "That was a pre-application, we were told." Another thing he said he's sure of about the Green Acres project: "I'm not going to swallow it."

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But No Encephalities Danger Attack on Mosquitoes Intensifies

By E.J. DUFFY TOWN BANK — Culex pipiens has a luxurious home, surrounded by 80 bayfront acres on a meandering stream Wet. hot and choked with vegetation, the Cox Hall Creek meadows here may be uncomfortable for Homo sapiens, it's the perfect summer place to raise a family of their predators — Culex pipiens mosquitoes. The bugs have been summering here for generations, dining on some of the finest flesh in Lower Township, and defying the best efforts toward keeping their home from becoming a castle. Fearing an outbreak of encephalitis or even malaria at the wartime naval base nearby. U.S. health officials had fielded German POWs against Culex pipiens and its cousins Del Haven resident Leo Sterenberg. a U.S. Public Health Service officer at the time, supervised the World War II captives when they dug drainagf ditches through the mosquito-infestro marshes. MORE RECENTLY, the county Mosquito Commission used dynamite to blast the weed-blocked Cox Hall channels to reduce stagnation and make the meadows less hospitable for breeding mosquito iarvae An anonymous caller told this paper last week that the commission this year has been spraying six times the recommended amount of pesticide to exterminate mosquitoes that carry St Louis Encephalitis virus, particularly dangerous to the elderly It's dangerous to children and senior citizens because they're less immune to the disease, said commission Superintendent Judy Hansen, but commission helicopters are not spraying more than recommended amounts of the insecticide Abate (Temephosi

Steamy, stagnant watei®Tias made breeding all the more kinky for mosquitoes in the local meadows this summer and the commission doubled and even tripled the usual amount of Abate from five pounds an acre. That's well within the 25-pound an acre recommended range, though. Hansen said. "BUT IT'S EXPENSIVE." she added, noting that the chemical's price jumped from 61 cents a pound last year to 91 cents '• j this year. Maturing in their cozy nursery along Cox Hall, mosquito larvae eat Abate, a contact poison, which attacks their central nervous systems When the adult mosquito population gets out of hand. Hansen said, commission pilots also spray Malathion or Scourge 1 "But there's no (encephalitis) virus in that area that I know of." she continued. " we have a pretty sophisticated surveillance for virus." Besides collecting for tests mosquito species linked to Eastern Equine Encephalitis, commission personnel draw blood from a "sentinel flock of chicken" at Fishing Creek and have those blood samples tested for evidence of St Louis Encephalitis. Hansen said. "WE FOUND NOTHING in our surveillance to indicate any viruses." she noted. While horses are the namesake host for Eastern Equine Encephalitis, mosquitoes that carry the St. Louis strain prefer birds So do Culex pipiens mosquitoes. But. in a pinch or to supplement their diet, they'll also sink their straws into a human or two. That, in short, is how St. Louis Encephalitis is transmitted from bug to bird to you. said Hansen. The carrier mosquito gives it to the bird and. when Culex pipiens bites the bird, that bug carries the disease to his next human victim. "To date, there is none that we know of." Hansen repeated. "We've been checking."

'l l=h easylas 3 — H 2 1 Wower Township fiaUl 1 1 I For More Information I 1 Call 465-5055