Herald - Lantern - Dispatch 18 December '85 27

Retrofit Dispute Smolders—

(From Page 1) pact ALL public buildings built before 1977 (not just the old Victorian or Colonial buildings);" John Dunwoudy, chamber president, wrote in a letter to this paper last week. He, other Cape May guest house owners and local businessmen — with merchants, legislators, school and municipal officials from around the state — expressed their concerns about the retrofit measures Nov. 26 before the state Fire Safety Commission. It agreed then to postpone any action on them for 60 days. AS PROPOSED, THE retrofit would require owners of all buildings, except single-family homes and duplexes, to pay for annual or quarterly inspections of their structures and install within a year such

safety features as additional exits, emergency lighting, supression systems and fire doors. "Mayor alternations could be required on hotels, motels, guest houses, restaurants, shops, museums, schools, libraries, churches, municipal, county and state buildings," Dunwoody noted. "This is not just an area of concern for the owners of old or historic properties," he maintained. "Major expenditures, on the part of individuals, non-profit groups, businesses and governments (that means the taxpayers), might well have to be made and, in some cases, possibly unnecessarily." If approved unaltered, the retrofit will cost Princeton University $22 million, a spokesman for that institution told state

Fire Safety commissioners last month. Charles Robinson, legislative vice president of the New Jersey School Board Association (NJSBA), told commissioners in July that proposed retrofit requirements for automatic alarms in 65 percent of the state's primary and secondary public schools would cost a total of $36 million. "JUST THE ANNUAL registration fee will cost the (state food) industry $360,000," former Assemblywoman Barbara McConnell, president of the New Jersey Food Council, griped before the fire code was approved in February with the retrofit pending. Listed in the same fire hazard category with explosives' manufacturers, supermarkets will each be billed $400 a year for inspections, she complained. "This will cost the industry twice," Anthony Amabile said for a statewide coalition of auto repairmen. "We already pay for fire inspections and now you're saying we have to pay another fee; we simply can't afford it." Besides $75-$ 1,200 annual inspections, permit fees and the cost of installing required safety equipment, retrofit protesters argue that there just aren't enough plumbers and other contractors readily available to install the equipment in the year required. Like Dunwoody, local protesters are lobbying today for a delay in implementing the retrofit and state loans to help building owners pay installation costs. "I WOULD GIVE THEM two years," McNulty said of time to implement the retrofit. "But I would require after two years that it be completed." The chief said he has no objection either to state revolving oans to underwrite retrofit installations. "The money's just sitting in the bank anyway." he observed "The governor's got money he doesn't know what to do with." But McNulty does object when retrofit protesters talk about installation costs and scarcity of contractors? "They see this purely in dollars and cents," he complained, suggesting, halfseriously, a building moritorium to solve the retrofit contractor shortage. Accustomed to at least one false alarm a month from Lower Cape May Regional schools, McNulty's skeptical about code strength, especially when retrofit "tradeoffs" have been proposed like smoke detectors instead of sprinkler systems. He's urged Lower Township's Council to require sprinklers even in single-family homes at Diamond Beach, the oceanfront resort in his district that's several miles from Erma's firehouse. SMOKE DETECTORS ALERT people to building fires, McNulty conceded, but sprinklers contain them for the 10-minute minimum it takes firemen to arrive at the scene and battle the blaze. "They have a nice charm to them," he said of guest homes in Cape May. "but people (can) still die in them. That's not too charming, is it?" To McNulty and other firemen, the real cost of fires is the death toll. "We see it a hell of a lot more than other people," he griped. , In "Why America Burns." a _NOVA documentary telecast on WHYY-TV more than a year ago, the narrator reported: "In this coming hour, there will probably be 300 fires in America. One person will die; three will be seriously injured, physically or psychologically disfigured for life. There will be 8,760 such hours of fire this year. "The young, the old and the helpless are the most susceptible." the narrator added "And each fire hour will cost the country $2 million — $20 billion a year — on top of the 8,000 dead, 24,000 seriously injured, and the pain and misery." Burn centers have big turnovers in nursing personnel , burn victims compare the

treatment to being skinned alive once a day. "THE COST OF TREATING a major burn is $40, 000- $50. 000 and months of pain," according to NOVA. "And then there can be years of psychological and physiological rehabilitation. The whole country pays the price. Yet we know this does not ne«d to happen." IZurich, a Swiss city of 400,000, recorded no residential fire deaths in 1980 when only 28 fires spread beyond one room in buildings much older than any in this county. More than 200 fires spread that year in Boston, Mass., which has lost an Average of 32 of its 600,000 people to fire each year between 1970-1980, NOVA documented. "To them, it's a serious thing," McNulty said of European attitudes toward fire prevention. "The fire death rate in Switzerland is less than one-eighth that in America," noted the NOVA narrator. "In Zurich, chimney sweeps are required to clean and inspect every home twice a year. Sweeps are licensed and they deal with all heating apparatus, both space and water heating, in both apartment buildings and smaller family homes. "And they sweep all the chimneys everywhere," the narrator added. "The sweeps, together with the fire police, make sure that all residential buildings, however old, meet the details of the two slim volumes of the Zurich (fire) codes." IN SEPTEMBER. THE county Firemen's Association asked county freeholders to upgrade the office of county fire marshal and enforce the two slim volumes of the state fire code at the county level. Freeholders declined, unless most of the county's 16 municipalities agreed. Most, like Lower Township, have decided to enforce the code at the fire district level. Others, like Ocean City, have opted for state enforcement. Reported locally in the April 17 edition of this paper, retrofit provisions of the fire code drew belated responses in the county. In June, Ocean City Mayor Jack Bittner called on the state to explain them at a July 1 meeting. Predicting that the retrofit would be "financially devasting to resort business," like Cape May's guest houses and hotels like The Flanders, the county Chamber of Commerce called the retrofit "massive overkill" in late July while seeking an Economic Impact Study. "According to statistics from the Bureau of Fire Safety, the overwhelming majority of fatal fires and accidents occur in residential buildings." Robinson of the NJSBA told the Fire Safety Commission in mid-July. NOVA bears him out: "...75 percent of all fires, deaths and injuries occur in family homes and apartments. Most people die in ones and twos at home — 6,000 each year. "THE MOST SERIOUS causes of residential fires are: cigarets setting fire to furniture and bedding; arson for profit; badly set up space heaters and woodbuming stoves; and cooking mishaps," according to NOVA. "Fires in schools always make headlines, but statistically are a rare occurence," Robinson argued before the commission, noting that the state Department of Education does not record a case of student death in any school fire. "For example." he added, "the most recent and destructive fire literally demolished a Paterson city school building, yet all 900 children were evacuated safely in less than three minutes." Responding to that argument, that state school districts have an "exemplary" fire safety record, while referring to the amusement park fire last year that killed eight teenagers, state Sen. John Caufield told Robinson. "Great Adventure had a perfect record — until a year ago." Retrofit provisions were strengthened after that May 1984 blaze in Jackson Township which sparked criminal prosecutions and costly civil lawsuits. But the fire code evolved after the 17-member Fire Safety Commission was formed in the wake of two fatal boarding house fires upstate in 1980 and 1981. Caufield, who is also Newark's fire commissioner. has been the code's major proponent statewide. Referring to the state, local proponent Harry Clayton, Avalon's construction, building and fire code official, observed in April : "We've been number one in life loss and we have a chance to correct it." Retrofit provisions become law when approved by the commissioner of the state Department of Community Affairs.

Grant, Loan Put Trash To Energy Back on Line

SUNSET BEACH - "You know the headaches and the heartaches I've had just trying to burn a little trash in Lower Township." Recalling his two-year effort to build a township trash-to-energy incinerator complex. Mayor Robert Fothergill was responding to Villas resident Mary Baxter, his only critic at a special Lower Council meeting Friday moring. State officials told their municipal counterparts then that the township has been approved for a $224,000 Green Acres grant and a $650,000 loan, payable at 2 percent over 20 years, to acquire and preserve 90 bayfront acres of the closed HarbisonWalker magnesite plant here. The state Bureau of Green Trust Management (BGTM) wants to know by the end of February whether Council will accept the money while the township Incinerator Authority recommends Council approve a no-cost feasibility study on leasing part of the plant property to power a company which would sublease to industrial and environmental tenants. PRESERVATION IS reason enough for Lower to acquire the property from Dresser Industries of Texas, Fothergill maintains. But — told Lower can't use its p or other municipalities' trash to fuel a township-owned incinerator to power such tenants because of a county MUA trash franchise — the mayor favors the authority recommendation for a feasibility study from INDE-Power of Feasterville, Pa. "That could be done by the end of February," Greg A. Anderson, INDEPower sales and marketing director, said of the proposed study. "It's unfortunate, because we're against the call again," observed Councilman Joseph Lonergan who has opposed the Green Acres grant-loan because Council had little time to consider it. He had thought that the township only filed a preapplication with Green Acres. "Maybe this should have happened two months ago," he said of the Friday meeting. "THAT'S POSSIBLE." Fothergill conceded, while Bruce W. Bechtloff of the BGTM told Lonergan that Lower's p reapplication automatically became an application. The township's proposal, to preserve the bayfront tract, was rated the highest of those submitted for environmental project funding, slid Robert Rusch. Green Trust supervisor. Fothergill, who founded the Incinerator Authority last year, has envisioned recreational uses of the bayside tract with users paying fees for camping, boat ramps etc. that would help defray the acquisition cost. The industrially-zoned property is assessed at more than $2.3 million and Dresser, Fothergill has said, wants to build condominiums there. Baxter told Fothergill that she's sick and tired of paying for other people's recreation." And she's "not at all convinced" that the township investment would benefit Lower taxpayers. "I think it's a great natural resource to preserve," Bechtloff replied. "This is not going to cost the taxpayers anything," said Fothergill, alluding to township income from any INDE-Power lease, and recreational user fees. "This is to benefit the taxpayers." Approving those plans is not just "one man's decision," though, Baxter said, referring to Fothergill. He, however, cited the Incinerator Authority recommenda-

tion for a INDE-Power feasibility study as evidence that more than one person favored the plans. "THIS IS TOWNSHIP POLITICS." he told those assembled after Baxter questioned his attendance at authority n eetings. 'No, this is not township politics," Baxter countered. "I supported you because you supported incineration." Besides the various recreation uses, which would be discounted for Lower residents, Fothergill has proposed an incinerator which would use waste to provide power for industries, that would hire local workers, and energy for aquaculture research and development facilities. "We plan to subcontract different processes on the site" for agriculture and aquaculture, Anderson said of $4 million designs for the tract, some of its buildings, and huge tanks that might be used to breed and research sealife. "TJIAT WOULD BE A big selling point." said Rusch. who's BGTM liason with Coastal Resources, another division of the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Concerned about the environmental impact of the INDE-Power incinerator on plans to preserve the tract, Bechtloff said BGTM, like Baxter, will want the township to hold public hearings on that proposal and would receive opposing viewpoints. But, facing the loss of a Sea Grants program in Sandy Hook to Delaware, Rusch saw possibilities in INDE-Power's lease and subleases of the land. "I'm optimistic about what you've just described to us," he told Anderson, asking him to meet and discuss them in detail with retiring DEP Commissioner Robert Hughey. What revived an incinerator project that appeared all but buried several months ago by the county MUA trash franchaise? "Privatization," Fothergill replied, preferring the INDE-Power scenario to a $4 million trash-to-energy incinerator alternative opposed by the MUA. "THAT MADE THE WHOLE thing feasible," observed Township Solicitor Bruce Gorman, stressing that the INDEPower plant would bum recyclables controlled by the township rather than the other refuse claimed by the MUA. Howard Farleen, a INDE-Power consultant from Tropical Technologies Associates, said owners of the three -or four-unit modular incinerator would buy recyclables from Lower and other municipalities if they're available. But it doesn't have to if they're not. The modulars could, and would if need be, bum wood or other combustibles to keep the plant producing power, he said. "You know that the township recyclables alone won't make your plant go?" Gorman asked. "We know that," Anderson replied. Beyond the power uses he already mentioned, incinerator energy could be adapted for reverse osmosis, a waterpurification process. Fothergill said. While preserving the 90 acres will help recharge the local aquifers, reverse osmosis could be used to suplement the township water supply, he reasoned. Another major well is showing signs of salt water intrusion, Fothergill said. Cape May pumped 158.9 million gallons from city wells in Lower just during the summer — 11 million gallons more than the summer of 1984 — with 3.3 million lost through leaks. * 4