Bernards Voices

Title above was the heading for a letter I wrote to the Bernards Township Committee in March 2008.  I submitted it again to the Planning Board at the last public hearing on the quarry rehab plan in June 2008.  It is linked here as report from 2008.   

I expect to comment on the grading plan in the new quary rehabilitation plan and will use a new report entitled “Quarry Rehab PLan; Grading PLan” that is also posted here.  In that report I refer to the report from 2008.

In the 2008 report I show how material already on site in 2008, both imported fill and native rock and overburden, can be moved to create slopes that are no greater than 3:1 above the surface of the lake, and no greater than 4:1 for surfaces below the lake surface. 

Bill Allen, 05-16-12

The next public hearing on the quarry rehabilitation plan will be on Tuesday, June 5, and we expect there will be an opportunity for the public to testify. The most urgent questions, I believe, relate to the potentially harmful substances in the fill imported from early 2006 to mid 2008, and I plan to address these first.

Also very important is the future grading plan. The attached report for 2012 is the basis for the third of three or four presentations I expect to make, on June 5 or when time permits.  This report argues that for safety reasons the steep quarry faces should be reshaped by constructing embankments against them with fill that is dug out on the south side of the quarry tract and moved north.  I call this Option 1 and first proposed it in 2004.  It will not be necessary to import fill to execute Option 1.

The new report cites a report from 2008 that is linked here and shown also in a separate post entitled “Quarry Rehabilitation with Material On Site”.

Bill Allen, 05-16-12

Comment from one member of the public was received at the public hearing on the quarry rehabilitation plan on May 8.  The next hearing will be on Tuesday, June 5, and it is expected that public comment will continue.  

The most urgent questions for quarry rehab today relate to the potentially harmful substances in the fill imported to construct embankments during the period from early 2006 to mid 2008.  The attached report addresses these and is the basis for the first of three or four presentations I plan to make.

The report presents test results for samples from  one monitoring well.  They show rising concentrations of several potentially harmful substances, called SVOCs [semi volatile organic compounds].  I make two arguments: 

• The Pllanning Board should not recommend approval of any rehabilitation plan before all issues related to the imported fill have been resolved.
• The board should recall Joe Sorge for further testimony and questioning on the data and documents provided to the board before his testimony on December 20, 2011. 

In my report I refer to a report submitted by Joe Sorge to DEP in March 2011.  To view this report go to Sorge_20110321_Final Phase II RIWP.

• Monitoring well locations are on a map on page 18.
• Table 1 with soil test results for MOA Area A is on pages 23 to 25.
• Table 2 with well test results for MOA Areas A, B, and C is on page 28. 

Bill Allen,    05-16-12

Dear Residents and Neighbors,

It has been a while since you have heard from us. In that time, representatives of our group have attended nine Planning Board hearings dedicated to the Quarry’s proposed Rehabilitation Plan to bring in 58,000 cubic yards of fill at the rate of 150-200 trucks/day. We have been advised that the public should be prepared to give their opinions/testimony tomorrow night, after the last witness. Your presence alone will speak loudly about the further importation of fill, especially at this time when the quarry has been found by the DEP to be environmentally contaminated and is under its jurisdiction to determine the extent of contamination and an appropriate remedy (e.g., capping of contaminated fill or removal). The best thing you can do is to show up at the Municipal Building courtroom. The hearing begins at 7:30. Please also write to our Township Committee as they ultimately decide whether the plan and importation of fill will be approved, based on the Planning Board’s recommendation. While they heard from the public clearly in 2008 and stopped the importation of fill, they truly do not know where the public stands on this issue today.

The following was posted in the Patch today by a resident and provides important background.

Hello -

Please attend tomorrow night’s Planning Board meeting at 7:30 – Municipal Building – and tell them “No More Dumping at Millington Quarry!” The public will finally, after 5 months of testimony, be allowed to voice their opinions regarding the Millington Quarry’s latest “rehabilitation” plan which seeks to import AT LEAST 55,800 truckloads of fill over a 3 year period. That’s 150 – 200 trucks PER DAY that will result in a steady stream of loud, treacherous and destructive dump trucks. If you lived here in 2006 – 2008, you know how the same truck traffic dramatically altered the ‘landscape’ of our quiet town. Not to mention the most alarming fact that the quarry is still under DEP jurisdiction due to contamination discovered in the over 3 million cubic yards of fill that were dumped during those years. According to township records, the first sample “tested high in arsenic, lead, benzo[a]anthracene, benzo[b & k]fluorathene, benzo[a]pyrene, indeno[1,2,3-cd]pyrene, and dieldrin.” All are known to cause cancer in humans. Furthermore, both arsenic and lead are toxins known to cause developmental delays and learning disabilities.

When residents expressed concerns to the Township in 2008 that trucks were coming from as far as Weehawken, the Bronx, Staten Island, Jersey City and NYC, and paying as much as $250/truckload to dump in our town, the Quarry protested that residents’ fears were unfounded. What was a licensed quarry had turned into an unlicensed dump, with the quarry reaping profits of an estimated $15 million/year at great risk to the health of residents and the environment. If you drive by the quarry now, you will see a sign on the entrance gate reading, “ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTIGATION/CLEAN-UP IN PROGRESS.”

Now under the guise of rehabilitating the quarry for future residential development, the quarry plans to bring in much more fill, even though we don’t know the extent of contamination and there is no approved plan for remediation.

SAY NO TO DUMPING IN OUR TOWN!

Thank you!!

Citizens for a Clean and Safe Millington Quarry

The Healthy Outcomes Partnership invites you to join us in discussing

The Power of Resiliency

 Wednesday, April 18th, 7:00pm

at the Somerset Hills YMCA

Sharon Lutz, LSW, Executive Director of EmPoWER Somerset will be presenting on how to make you, your children and your family have resiliency to handle any situation. Come learn what you can do to have a positive mindset and how to instill resiliency in your children.

This event is free and open to all community members.

For more information on this event and other upcoming mental health workshops email Susan Visser, Healthy Outcomes Partnership Coordinator at svisser@somersethillsymca.org

Community workers help to bridge treatment gap in mental health | reported by Rosalind Miller | guardian.co.uk.

Training lay people can play a crucial role in helping to deliver effective care for depression and anxiety in resource-poor, primary healthcare settings. A report in the Lancet last year concluded that improving access to effective mental healthcare could help to alleviate poverty. Mental health was framed as a “development priority”.

Patel insists armies of mental health professionals are not needed to provide care. Instead, he believes in “mental health for all, by all”.

“We need to empower everyone to be able to understand the commonsense ways in which first they can promote their own mental health, ‘mental health literacy’,” he says. “Secondly, to provide mental healthcare when someone close to them is in a crisis, ‘mental health first aid’, and thirdly, at the professionalised level, to use lay health workers to provide mental care for people with mental illness.

Listen to short (7 minute) related Lancet podcast.

Thanks to the good people at the Capital Good Fund for retweeting this from Partners in Health.

Dear Residents and Neighbors,

Planning Board hearings on the Quarry’s proposed Rehabilitation Plan will continue tomorrow night at the Municipal Building on Collyer Lane at 7:30 pm.  All documents have been posted on the Township website at bernards.org and can be accessed by scrolling down on the home page to MQ Reclamation or by using this link.

One of the documents is the “MQI Clean Soil Acceptance Procedure” which the Quarry proposes to use to bring in more fill.  The Planning Board must determine whether more fill is necessary to rehabilitate the land or whether the Quarry should be limited to whatever clean fill it has already imported. If more fill were permitted, the PB must determine not only whether the protocols are adequate to ensure that only clean fill is brought in this time, but the likelihood of compliance and the ability of the Township to enforce them.

Residents have questioned why we are here again arguing over more fill.  The answer is in the Township ordinance on Quarry licensing.  See 4:9-5.

Required Review and Renewal of Rehabilitation Plan. Approval of every rehabilitation plan shall expire on the third anniversary of its approval, and a revised rehabilitation plan shall be submitted not less than six months before the expiration of the rehabilitation plan. The revised rehabilitation plan shall be reviewed by the Planning Board and approved by the Township Committee in the same manner as an initial rehabilitation plan.

The ordinance describes the requirements of the rehabilitation plan.  With each rehabilitation plan application, the Quarry can argue for more fill importation.  Residents have questioned the Quarry’s sales manager as to whether the Quarry is prepared to pay for fill this time, and the sales manager said that they have not decided, but that there is no greater risk of bad fill if you are paid to take it versus if you must purchase it.

—Citizens for a Clean and Safe Millington Quarry

In recognition of the 25th Anniversary of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (February 26-March 3, 2012) the Healthy Outcomes Partnership, an initiative of the Somerset Hills YMCA, invites you to join us in a discussion of healing and hope.

Come hear a young woman share about her struggle with anorexia and her journey to recovery. Listen to our panel of experts as they talk about the signs and symptoms of eating disorders and available treatment options. Get the information and resources you need to help your child, your friend, your loved one.

Everybody Knows Somebody

Wednesday, February 29th, 7:00pm

at the Somerset Hills YMCA

This event is free & open to the community

For more information on this event and other upcoming mental heathworkshops email SusanVisser, Healthy Outcomes Coordinator at svisser@somersethillsymca.org

Nature’s Eric Olson interviews Kerry Ressler’s on his research published in Nature 470, February 24, 2011:

Why do some people develop post-traumatic stress disorder, but others emerge from a horrific event relatively unscathed? A molecule involved in orchestrating the brain’s response to stress may hold the key to this difference.

Women are 30 to 50 per cent more likely to develop PTSD than men. (The interview doesn’t address the episodic nature of PTSD. I don’t believe this research tell us anything about an episode’s frequency or intensity–for example, a flashback triggered by a car back fire. Nor does it address the extent with which anxiety episodes are chronic and worsen over time. I have my own personal obsession, I guess would be the word, about whether levels of estrogen and how they change over a woman’s lifetime, impact the intensity of her anxiety or depression.)

During the interview, PTSD is mentioned often by the interviewer, but the researcher, Kerry Ressler, doesn’t seem to differentiate between PTSD, panic and generalized anxiety disorders, as well as depression. The biological factors (the protein: Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP), and its modulation by estrogen) impact fear inhibitors and stress responses independent of which anxiety disorder is being discussed. But it does appear that research was conducted on “heavily traumatized subjects,” rats, mice? Why? Because the symptoms were easier to induce and observe? Because the name PTSD is more eye-catching in headlines and grant applications?

Fast forward to minute 6:38 of the podcast:

Related transcript.
Research article abstract.

Dr. Ressler:

I don’t necessarily think that the symptoms at the final common pathway of symptoms level, there is necessarily a difference between men and women, but what we are increasingly learning about complex brain disorders is that there is probably many different ways to get to that disorder.

The Somerset Hills YMCA will be offering a 3 session Mental Health First Aid Training class to the community on Thursdays, February 23rd, March 1st & March 8th 2012 from 5:00pm-9:00pm. Participants must be able to attend all three sessions.  The cost is $75 which includes a light dinner, handbook and materials.

Mental Health First Aid is a groundbreaking, evidence based public education program that helps participants identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders.

Mental Health First Aid is offered in the form of an interactive 12-hour course that presents an overview of mental illness and substance use disorders in the U.S. and introduces participants to risk factors and warning signs of mental health problems, builds understanding of their impact, and overviews common treatments.

Those who take the 12-hour certification course will learn a 5-step action plan to help an individual in crisis connect with appropriate professional, peer, social, and self-help care.

This course has benefited a variety of audiences and key professions, including: primary care professionals, employers and business leaders, faith communities, school personnel and educators, state police and corrections officers, nursing home staff, mental health authorities, state policymakers, volunteers, families and the general public.

For more information on this upcoming training contact Susan Visser, Healthy Outcomes Partnership Coordinator at the Somerset Hills YMCA at svisser@somersethillsymca.org or 908-766-7898 x553