Posted: Friday, March 18, 2011, Press of AC
Residents of municipalities within a 10 mile radius of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant have potassium iodide tablets available to them. Potassium Iodide pills can help prevent some of the damaging effects of radiation. Exposure to high levels of radiation can lead to thyroid cancer.
People should contact their doctor before beginning any medication because Potassium Iodide pills can be harmful to some people.
The pills are available from the Ocean County Health Department to residents in Barnegat, Barnegat Light, Beach Haven, Beachwood, Berkeley, Dover, Harvey Cedars, Island Heights, Lacey, Long Beach, Ocean, Ocean Gate, Seaside Park, Ship Bottom, South Toms River, Stafford and Surf City.
For more information, call 732-341-9700 ext. 7502
March 15, 2011 By RICHARD DEGENER Staff Writer
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Southern New Jersey has four coastal nuclear reactors, but experts say the region’s geology makes it unlikely that the disaster striking Japan could happen here. While two of New Jersey’s plants are similar in design to the plants spewing radioactive gases in Japan, the New Jersey shore has no history of large earthquakes or the tsunamis they can generate.
Experts say coastal New Jersey plants are far more likely to have problems from a hurricane, or even a meteor strike, than an earthquake-generated tsunami.
“Geographically, Japan is fundamentally different than the shore of Atlantic City. If a meteor crashes into the ocean, it could create a bad tsunami damaging to New Jersey,” said John Armbruster, a seismologist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
The Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey Township, Ocean County, and Hope Creek in Salem County are boiling-water reactors made by General Electric, the same as the Japanese plants. The Salem Nuclear Generating Station, also in Salem County, has two pressurized-water reactors built by Westinghouse that are not similar.
But experts say the design does not really matter in an event such as Japan is experiencing. Even the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear power industry watchdog group, acknowledges that no plant may be able to function after such a blow. “Any reactor design operating today faced with an earthquake and tsunami that took out the backup power supply would be faced with a similar situation. Reactors are designed to withstand an earthquake or a tsunami, but not designed to handle both. That’s one of the lessons learned,” said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and director of the union’s Nuclear Safety Program.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Armbruster said the nearest major fault off the East Coast is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which lies about 8,000 feet deep in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Earthquakes are created at faults in the earth’s crust, while tsunamis are born when the rock plates are thrust upward. The depth of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and its distance to shore, would limit the size of such a wave, he said.
Armbruster said the fault has never been known to create large earthquakes such as the magnitude-9 quake that devastated Japan.
“The Mid-Atlantic Ridge doesn’t have magnitude-9 earthquakes. It’s a jagged thing with a lot of smaller pieces that create smaller quakes,” Armbruster said.
There have been two big East Coast earthquakes in about three centuries of recorded history, Armbruster said. The worst was a magnitude-7 that hit Charleston, S.C., in 1886. It liquefied the sandy soil, bent railroad tracks, knocked down buildings and caused fountains of mud to gush out of the ground, but did not create a tsunami.
Armbruster said a 1929 earthquake off Newfoundland, Canada, led to a tsunami that wiped out a coastal village, but he said the wave was caused by an underwater landslide triggered by the earthquake. Deep water is far off New Jersey, about 100 miles, and that is the closest area for a significant landslide. The wide and shallow coastal shelf could reduce the impact as any wave’s energy is lost due to drag or friction from the ocean floor.
“The New Jersey shoreline has a gradual slope compared to Newfoundland, so it would not be so strong. In Newfoundland, damage was in a bay where the shape of the bay funneled the energy. The coast of New Jersey is more of a straight line.” Armbruster said.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires U.S. plants to be designed for natural catastrophes known to happen in a given area. Joe Delmar, a spokesman for PSEG Nuclear, which operates the three Salem County reactors, said they are designed to handle a magnitude-6.5 earthquake, and precautions would begin at a magnitude-4 quake. The plants also are designed to withstand a tsunami rising 18.1 feet above sea level.
A coastal storm could be a bigger threat to New Jersey plants than an earthquake. Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay waters met in several sections of Cape May County during a direct-hit hurricane Sept. 6, 1821.
“Storm surge is the major concern,” said John Wilkin, a physical oceanographer at Rutgers University.
Wilkin said he cannot see an earthquake creating such a wall of water, because the fault lines are much farther out than in Japan and in much deeper water.
“The vertical movement to lift water and generate the wave has to be in moderate-depth water. We don’t have the capacity for similar water movement,” Wilkin said. But he said the lack of an early-warning system for tsunamis, such as is used on the West Coast, is a concern.
The lessons of Japan
Geology may be New Jersey’s friend, but Japan is already pointing to some areas of concern. In Japan, the earthquake knocked out power that ran electric pumps to cool the reactor cores. Diesel generators kicked on, but within an hour a tsunami closed those systems down. Backup batteries then ran the pumps for eight hours, giving a window to prepare to use seawater to cool the reactor core. Radioactive materials have been released during the seawater cooling process, in several cases due to explosions. Most U.S. plants only have four hours of battery power.
“We’re a little concerned. We’re light compared to what Japan has, and Japan came up short. Most of our plants are vulnerable with only four hours of battery capacity,” Lochbaum said.
Delmar said the Salem plants have only four hours of battery power but can use the diesel generators to recharge the batteries. He said the generators and the diesel fuel are in a “secure structure.” But one lesson from Japan is that nothing is totally secure. The water washed away diesel fuel tanks and swamped the generators. Delmar said it has raised some questions for PSEG.
“In a worse-case scenario, we could pump water from the Delaware River to keep the reactor cool,” Delmar said.
Japan evacuates all people within a 12-mile radius in such emergencies, while the U.S. requires only a 10-mile radius. Potassium iodide pills, which can prevent thyroid cancer from radiation, are only supplied to those within 10 miles. The Union of Concerned Scientists wants more protections.
Exelon Corp., which operates Oyster Creek and 16 other reactors in the U.S., seven of which are similar to the Japanese reactors, is not coming to any conclusions yet. “Nobody knows the full story of what is going on there. Comparisons are a little difficult at this time. Every plant is a little different” Exelon spokeswoman April Schilpp said. American plants, Schilpp said, underwent major improvements to withstand terrorist attacks following Sept. 11, 2001, such as the addition of more backup power systems. Improvements also were made following the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. “We don’t want to panic because of something happening in Japan that is very, very unlikely to happen here,” Schilpp said.
EPA pulls for nutrient limits
March 10, 2011
BARNEGAT BAY — By the middle of next year, scientists could have a new biological yardstick for measuring the health of Barnegat Bay, consisting of multiple factors that can help track where nutrient pollution comes from and its effect on bay life. Such an index would be a long-sought tool in ongoing efforts to restore the bay to health.
For years, environmental advocates have called for tough standards on the amount of nutrients entering the bay — mostly nitrogen compounds from fertilizer and stormwater runoff that, over time, alter bay ecology at a basic level. "The sea grass begins to decline, and you have less habitat for the fish and crabs," said Michael Kennish, a research professor with the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, who is heading the effort to build a biometric index for the bay. "The science is clear on this: What you need to do is get a reduction in the nitrogen."
As a result, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is pushing the state Department of Environmental Protection to establish nutrient limits. They would be known as TMDLs — total maximum daily loads — said John Sess, a spokesman for the EPA's Region II office, which has worked closely with the state for years on Barnegat Bay.
Over the last decade, federal and state environmental officials have agreed to establish such load limits on more than 300 New Jersey waterways. As early as 2002, state and federal officials had an agreement to include Barnegat Bay's major tributaries — the Toms and Metedeconk rivers — on a list of 159 waterways that should have TMDLs. By 2004, northern Barnegat Bay itself had been placed on that list because of persistent high bacteria and low levels of dissolved oxygen.
The new biological index could be a big step toward establishing the TMDL standards. The basic theory of the biological index has been understood by scientists and environmental officials for years. Only recently did the DEP get funding for the nuts-and-bolts work of putting it together — matching up mountains of water-quality data that go back to the 1980s, biological surveys of the bay and the massive U.S. Geological Survey watershed modeling effort.
Setting hard and precise TMDLs ultimately could give DEP legal and regulatory authority to enforce protections for the bay. That would include buffer zones around tributary streams and fixing upstream pollution sources as they are found, according to Bill Wolfe of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a former DEP employee who used to work on TMDL plans.
But before the hard TMDL standards can be established — a process that will consume lots of time and resources — the DEP will use the new index as part of what Commissioner Bob Martin called a "narrative standard" in gauging the bay's condition based on scientific observations.
Critics worry that it won't show much, but scientists with Rutgers University and the U.S. Geological Survey are building a system they say can track changing conditions — and locate exactly where the bay's nutrient overloads are coming from.
Key factors
It's a sophisticated and technically challenging approach to document huge blooms of microscopic plants — called phytoplankton — that feed on nutrients from stormwater runoff and excessive lawn fertilizer until they get so dense that sunlight can't reach the bay bottom. Those blooms are killing off underwater eelgrass beds — another key factor that the index will measure, along with shellfish and other bottom-dwelling animals.
"We're calculating the response of these waters to the nutrient loading," Kennish said. "To do that, you have to know what the response is of the organisms in the estuary, starting with the plants." Simply put, "the bay has an overabundance of plant material," Kennish said. The nutrients are nitrogen and, to a lesser degree, phosphorus — the same active ingredients in lawn fertilizer that makes grass green up.
"Nutrients stimulate growth, then the plant biomass dies off," Kennish said. Other microscopic life feeds off the dead phytoplankton, and that bacteria uses up dissolved oxygen in the water that fish and crabs need to survive.
The cycle has become so extreme that by 2008, northern Barnegat Bay finally had low dissolved oxygen levels that exceeded federal Clean Water Act standards.
For its part, the U.S. Geological Survey is developing models to show the historic increases in stormwater runoff as the bay's 660-square-mile watershed became suburbanized in the last decades of the 20th century.
Those models will also show where the biggest loads of nutrients come from today, said Robert Nicholson, supervisor for the USGS New Jersey environmental studies program.
Computer mapping allows measurement of suburban growth marks from 1973 through 2007, and "the model is driven by those land use changes," Nicholson said.
Modeler Ron Baker also draws on weather and rainfall records, and sampling from over the decades that measured nutrient concentrations in streams.
The study must include "many dozens" of sub-watershed basins and tributary streams, Nicholson said. "It's complicated. Everyone knew that going in."
"When we have all our sets together, we can look for relationships between our nutrient loads and the biological responses we see in the bay," Nicholson said.
Repeated cycles of bloom and decay poison the bay bottom as sulfides build up in the sediment, scientists and commercial clammers say.
Even in the bay's less polluted southern reaches of Little Egg Harbor, where eelgrass and clam beds extended for miles in the 1980s, boaters now pull up foul-smelling muck on their anchors. In the northern bay, underwater meadows of eelgrass and widgeon grass have disappeared from many areas.
Clearing hurdles
Biological indicators may be a key to unlocking regulatory roadblocks for cleaning up the bay. Right now the simplest measure of water quality is dissolved oxygen, and parts of the bay still pass that test. Bacteria levels are another marker of water quality, and by those standards the central bay seemed to be doing great in the 1990s, when state officials announced more and more areas would be open for clam harvesting. Just one problem there, the clammers said: No clams.
Those facts showed scientists and state officials how standards like "dissolved oxygen alone can't be protection for a lagoon estuary like this," Kennish said. "You've got to target the biological responses."
But the DEP's time frame for achieving a TMDL worries environmental groups, who want to avoid what happened to the government's Chesapeake Bay program. There, years of negotiations and delays left fishing and environmental groups frustrated, until the threat of a lawsuit nudged the Obama administration in 2009 to commit the EPA to set load limits for the Chesapeake.
A package of Barnegat Bay bills passed by the state Legislature included a provision for hard numeric limits, but Gov. Chris Christie conditionally vetoed that part at the DEP's advice. The legislation had specified a two-year time frame in the knowledge that the Rutgers group would have its criteria ready in 2012, said Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club. Now, "if you're talking about five years, it could be 10 years" before nutrient levels can be rolled back, Tittel said. "Unless we see a TMDL, we're going to see weakening of land use and coastal development controls."
Proposed budget up $4.7 million
Asbury Park Press, March 8, 2011
TOMS RIVER — The Ocean County tax rate would rise 0.9 cents, to 28.1 cents, this year, according to a preliminary draft of the 2011 budget the Board of Freeholders plan to introduce next week.
Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr., the director of finance on the all-Republican, five-member board, offered an overview at an agenda meeting Wednesday. He said the county's anticipated $352.6 million budget is up $4.7 million, with $293.3 million to be raised in taxes, an increase of $6.2 million.
Citing his own home on Pine Beach's Motor Road as an example of what that means for at least one taxpayer, Bartlett said the county's share of his own tax bill would increase about $30 this year. Because an equalized rate is applied in calculating county taxes in all 33 municipalities, taxes may differ on two homes of the same value but are in different Ocean County towns. Bartlett said the county would appropriate about $17.2 million from surplus, a little more than half of the $33.9 million available in the account, to help offset the budget increase.
Anticipating criticism, as in past years, that the county should dip deeper into its surplus to completely avoid a tax increase in tough economic times, Bartlett said doing so would jeopardize the county's AAA bond rating and put its government at some financial risk in the event of an emergency expenditure in the future, such as another major blizzard.
There are no planned furloughs or layoffs for county employees this year. However, Bartlett warned layoffs should be expected if some of the county's collective bargaining units prevail in binding arbitration later this year. Four of its seven law enforcement unions have filed for such arbitration after reaching an impasse with the freeholders in negotiations for new labor contracts.
Bartlett said the county eliminated 62 positions through attrition in 2010, with salaries and wages down $1.3 million from last year. At the same time, however, pension costs are up $2.7 million and health benefits are up $350,000 this year.
The county's general operating expenses are to remain flat for 2011, following a three-year period when the county had been able to reduce expenses by a total of about $10 million. "It is at a point where it can't go down any further," Bartlett said.
Elsewhere, county aid to Ocean County College and the Ocean County Vocational Technical School system has been reduced by $500,000 and $150,000, respectively.
Bartlett said the freeholders have also slashed aid to community-based organizations — such as the Ocean County Historical Society — by an average of about 10 percent, for a total reduction of $4.2 million. "We have substantial hurdles," Bartlett said. "In an economic downturn, we have social services costs go up. We have budgeted an additional $600,000 for the Board of Social Services, so the total amount now going to social services (from county taxpayers alone) is now approaching $20 million."
The one big expense the county faces in 2011 is the planned May opening of the $55 million state-of-the-art addition to the Ocean County Jail. Without the addition, Bartlett said, the county could have avoided a tax increase.
The freeholder board has hired 28 new corrections officers and estimates the new addition alone will result in operating costs of $2.5 million this year.
"It is unfortunate that the jail comes online at this particular time," Bartlett said, who was quick to add that the expansion had been absolutely necessary to house a growing inmate population.
Freeholder John P. Kelly, director of law and public safety, said a report commissioned last year for the addition projected that about 100 new corrections officers would be needed to staff the expanded jail complex. But he cited the efficiency of Warden Theodore J. Hutler Jr. and of the freeholder board in bringing that number down to the 28 hired. "We did things within the jail . . . some security systems that would have less reliance on personnel and more reliance on the new technologies, and (it was) the warden himself who came up with procedures and all the like," Kelly explained.
Long Beach Township, Beach Haven may honor each other's beach badges
By DONNA WEAVER Staff Writer pressofAtlanticCity.com | Feb.19,2011
LONG BEACH TOWNSHIP — Mayor Joseph Mancini said the township and neighboring Beach Haven are discussing whether to honor one another’s seasonal beach tags.
“This is the first step to getting everybody to understand that we’re one island,” Mancini said Thursday.
Mancini added that the contract would be a “gentleman’s agreement” that badges will be honored in each town. He said officials want to make vacationing on Long Beach Island less confusing by offering a more user-friendly beach so people can visit each other, since each of the island’s six municipalities have their own beach tags.
“If you have friends staying in Beach Haven and you want to go up there for the day, that’s what this will be for,” he said.
Long Beach Township and Beach Haven’s beaches meet on the southern end of Long Beach Island — posing a problem for vacationers who meander off their tag-designated beaches. Beach Haven Mayor Chuck Maschal said beach patrol supervisors from both municipalities will meet next month to iron out the details of the agreement.
“We think it’s a great idea, and it’s the way we begin to work together as communities all across the island,” Maschal said. “We’re starting this process with the seasonal beach badges. There’s no reason if someone wants to walk down the island from Long Beach Township to the Seashell in Beach Haven to get a cocktail, why they can’t go out onto the beach and catch some sun and waves. They shouldn’t be hassled. We’re trying to make this a friendlier use, friendly island.”
Ventnor and Margate, two neighboring towns on Absecon Island in Atlantic County, have honored each other’s beach tags since the 1970s, when beach fees were implemented. The two shore towns have saved money through the design and manufacture of one beach tag. Each year, the municipalities alternate in choosing the beach tag design — and both town’s beach tags are the same price.
February 14, 2011
The Long Beach Township Police Department (LBTPD) is investigating four (4) recent reports of copper piping being cut and stolen from exterior showers from unoccupied homes. The locations are in the Haven Beach section of the Township on Beach Avenue.
The time frame for these are currently unknown, but based on a recent theft that occurred in Harvey Cedars, it is believed these are recent thefts. (Harvey Cedars occurred over this past weekend). There have been additional thefts that have been reported in other jurisdictions on the Island also.
We are asking members of our community to keep an eye out for ANY suspicious people or vehicles. If anyone sees anything or anyone suspicious they are asked to call their local police department immediately.
The Long Beach Township Police Department phone number is: 494-3322.
In the event there is an emergency call 9-1-1.
NICHOLAS HUBA, Asbury Park Press,Wed., Feb.2,2011
LONG BEACH TOWNSHIP — Township officials say they are moving forward with a plan to move their local elections from May to November in order to save about $15,000.
An ordinance on the move will be introduced during the Board of Commissioners meeting at 4 p.m. Friday at the municipal building, 6805 Long Beach Blvd. A public hearing on the ordinance is scheduled for Feb. 18. "There seems to be a move all over the island (Long Beach Island) to get on the same schedule," Mayor Joseph Mancini said Tuesday morning during the commissioners' caucus meeting.
Late last year, neighboring Harvey Cedars approved a measure that moved its elections from May to November. The move saved the borough approximately $6,000, officials said.
During the November elections, county and state races are held. Municipalities must pay the cost of elections held in May because there are no state and county races.
Under the ordinance, current elected terms would be extended to the end of 2011, with the election in November. If the election remained in May, the terms of the board members would expire in July.
Mancini said Beach Haven is considering a similar change.
Earlier last year, the Legislature approved a bill that allows municipalities with nonpartisan elections to move their elections from May to November.
Matthew Weng, an attorney for the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, said more towns are looking at switching from May elections to November elections.
"I know that this is already very popular just by the number of requests for information I've gotten," he said. "We supported this bill for the same reason that towns are moving toward doing it: It saves money and increases participation."
Bill Kunz, a Long Beach Township resident, said having all of the municipalities on Long Beach Island on the same election schedule would allow for islandwide questions.
"By doing it, you could get everyone's opinion on an issue," Kunz said. "The questions could be very specific and gauge what people think of issues like consolidation."
Mancini said every municipality on Long Beach Island would have to approve the question before it could happen.
"That sounds like a great idea," Mancini said, of the idea of islandwide questions.